


in the darkness there'll be hidden worlds that shine

by janie_tangerine



Series: a song of stranger things [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Horror, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Stranger Things Fusion, Angst with a Happy Ending, Badass Arya, Canon-Typical Violence, Detectives, Dungeons & Dragons, EVENTUAL but it happens, Eventual Fluff, Friendship, Human Experimentation, Inspired by Stranger Things (TV 2016), Jon Snow knows something, Minor Character Death, Multi, Mystery Stories, POV Alternating, Poor Theon, Ramsay is his own warning, Rescue Missions, Robb Stark is a Gift, Star Wars References, Supernatural Elements, Zombies, and i never realized it'd be this long, the stranger things au i kinda wanted to write after finishing the show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-07
Updated: 2016-10-07
Packaged: 2018-08-20 03:35:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 82,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8234699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: in which, when two girls disappear on a dark and stormy night, their friends and families must confront terrifying forces to get them back.





	1. all the rest is darkness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [downlookingup](https://archiveofourown.org/users/downlookingup/gifts).



> Uhm. Haha. My got-exchange prompt for this round was _Stranger Things AU, featuring the Stark kids and maybe also Myrcella and Tommen and Shireen!_ I... uh... did I say I really liked Stranger Things? And I went like 'OH NEAT TOTALLY DOABLE' and then THIS happened. I honestly have NO FUCKING CLUE of how it turned out this long but - yeah. Uhm. It happened.
> 
> SO, on to actual important things: thing is, I was recasting, I couldn't decide who should be who and then decided HEY YOU KNOW WHAT JUST PUT EVERYONE IN IT. We ended up with Stranger Things AU featuring Stark kids/Lannister kids/Shireen plus Dacey/Ygritte/Wylla Manderly as the D&D crowd, Jaime/Stannis as Joyce, Davos/Brienne as Hopper, Arya/Sansa as Nancy and Theon/Jon as Eleven. BEAR WITH ME I SWEAR I THOUGHT IT OUT. Yeah then I get surprised if it's long... 
> 
> Also, I didn't use extra warnings up there because I didn't think it was stuff SO relevant to be in the tags given the weight in the story, but just to be extra sure: this has a level of gore/violence pretty much on par with the level of gore/violence in Stranger Things (probably less). If you watch GOT regularly then it's probably nothing too bad. There's ramsay/theon implied backstory which might be me rehashing book canon so you know what to expect, but it's mostly past stuff. The minor character deaths are no one you'll miss most probably.
> 
> Also all the ships listed are eventual endgame rather than a MAJOR plot point you're probably better off going in not looking for SHIP CONTENT - also the throbb is actually gen but since it can be read as pre-slash and they're sorta intense about it I tagged the ship too. ~~I might write the sequel one day just not this one.~~ Also Dacey/Robb/Ygritte are all the same age for plot reasons and other ages have been tweaked for plot reasons shh I had to.
> 
> Finally: endless thanks to tumblr user lordhellbore for betaing this demagorgon of a fic (hahaha *cries*). And, before you start, a few useful links you might wanna check before reading if you don't know about the referenced stuff:
> 
> \- this is a [lich](http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/lich.htm);  
> \- this is a [tarrasque](http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/tarrasque.htm);  
> \- [this is a best of han solo and leia organa](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bz-o1O-NftI) (IT'S NECESSARY OKAY TRUST ME);
> 
> okay now you're set. :D Also: fic title is from Bruce Springsteen, section titles are from Stephen King, nothing belongs to me except the 'how you rework this thing with a gazillion characters' and now I'm really done.

_The room is dark. Nothing new on that front._

_One is sobbing in the corner._

_Nothing new on that front either._

_He used to, a long time ago. He hasn’t for a while. It’s been less since they brought One in – Sir has pretty much forgotten about him since he found out there was someone more gifted he could try and experiment on from the very beginning._

_If only Sir’s son had also forgotten about – about_ him.

 _He keeps his ears open. He’s nowhere near the_ gift _One is, and maybe it’s because he wasn’t always here, even if he barely remembers life before. He barely remembers his own n –_

_He can’t think about that. If Ramsay finds out –_

_He’s nowhere near the_ gift _One is, but his senses are better than average, for one. He can hear it if people are coming._

_They aren’t._

_He crawls slowly to the other side of the room, trying to be as silent as possible, until he reaches the corner where One is sitting – he’s sobbing, but no one without better than average senses would hear it. He also has perfected the art of being silent._

_He wishes he could ask One what’s happened this time, but – talking is not – he just doesn’t do it these days. It’s better that he doesn’t. There’s a missing finger on his left hand now, and Ramsay did threaten to cut his tongue next should he _displease_ him, and –_

_No._

_He puts an arm on One’s shoulder, and a moment later a pair of grey eyes full of tears looks up at him. One is shaking his head in small, quick shakes._

_Re – he raises his right hand and makes a motion that he hopes One will understand._

_“They’re close,” One sobs. He also doesn’t talk much, but no one’s ever threatened to cut off any part of him – he’s too valuable. “Maybe next time. I can’t – I don’t – if – ”_

_One doesn’t finish that sentence, but he understands even too well. He knows what was the plan. One’s been here since the beginning and being in the center of things he hasn’t guessed what was the entire point of what_ they _were doing to the both of them until recently –_

 _But_ he _knows. He’s overheard enough. And Ramsay tends to talk more than he should, when –_ when _._

_He knows exactly what these people want to do and from what he’s seen he knows that One could manage it._

_He looks at the dried blood covering One’s upper lip and part of his face. They probably stopped because he was bleeding from his nose, but one day he’s not going to bleed, or maybe they won’t care._

_Thunder is rolling outside and rain crashes against the small window of their bare cell._

_Usually, just after one of their_ sessions _, they lie low. They don’t want either One or him to die of exhaustion, he figures. Most times there’s less guards around because the more tired they are, the less of a threat they are. And One might be exhausted, but –_

_But _he_ isn’t. And he’s not the most powerful out of the two of them, but –_

_But he’s powerful enough to knock out a few guards and fry the alarm system, especially if it’s raining already._

_He breathes in._

_He hasn’t been out in years._

_He should like being _out_ , if it’s the last thing he does._

_He takes One’s arm and tugs upwards._

_“What?” One asks, his voice tiny._

_He nods towards the door._

_Now we leave, he thinks, and he knows One’s not a telepath and he’s not one either, but maybe he’ll guess – and he does. One stares up at him, nods once, wipes the dried blood from his face. What little hair is on One’s head – it’s buzzed, of course it is, for the electrodes – looks pitch black under the moonlight even if he knows it’s dark brown. His grey eyes are still wet but he looks like he’s down with the plan._

_Good._

_Good, because if they get caught –_

_He’s not going to consider the option._

_He stares at the lock on the door. He might have to concentrate a bit, but he’s sure he can handle at least that, can’t he?_

_A moment later, a small creak rises from the lock. There’s no key, but it turns as if there was._

_It turns once, twice, thrice, and at the fourth time, the door opens up very, very gently._

_It’s time to run._

Now.

\--

“Sorry, you can’t throw it again.”

“Aw, come on, Shireen, it was real bad luck here but –”

“Wylla, lay off. You’ve known her for years, do you think she’d really let you throw again?”

Trust Bran Stark to be the voice of reason even if he’s cooked up the weirdest characters in their party, Shireen thinks but doesn’t say. “ _Thank you_. Wylla, sorry, but if I let you re-do it then we should all re-do it and we would never finish a campaign, and you know it.”

“Right, right, the dungeon master has spoken,” Wylla agrees reluctantly. “You’ve got a point.”

“Also,” Bran keeps on, “she threw the die before and that dracolich got her and now she can’t play until we run into some way to bring her back to life since I don’t have a good enough spell, you can’t cheat when she didn’t. Tommen, go ahead.”

“Oh, so it’s my turn, finally?” Tommen says. “It feels like it’s been a century.”

“Well,” Bran concedes, “what did you expect when Shireen has been conspiring with my brother when it comes to planning?”

Shireen doesn’t even bother trying to not roll her eyes. “We have not been conspiring. But he’s good at being the dungeon master and I only wanted tips!”

And instead Robb ended up sharing with her this imaginary place he came up with himself and listen, Westeros is _cool_ , okay? She had ideas for it. And _she_ is the dungeon master.

“Right, right, can we just go ahead with it?”

“Okay. Right, you are –”

“Guys?”

They all jump on their seats, almost knocking the board off the table while Tommen’s uncle, Jaime, walks into the room.

(Well, technically he’s sort of Shireen’s relative as well, since Tommen’s father is her uncle, but they barely saw each other before Jaime moved here a couple of years ago on account of wanting his nephews to be near the only other relatives they had, so she feels weird thinking of him as her uncle as well.)

“I mean, not that I’d care, but it’s what, nine forty-five? Shireen, your father will have my head if you aren’t home by ten. Wylla, _yours_ might not but I wouldn’t risk it. And let’s not even discuss dear Mrs. Stark here.”

Oh. It is late, after all.

“But it was my turn!” Tommen sighs.

“You’ll start first when we see each other at my place next time,” Bran says. “We need to finish this one anyway.”

“Good point,” Wylla says. “Well, I should probably come up with another character, this one’s toast.”

“Hey, did you forget I am the healer in this party?” Bran sounds so affronted, Shireen has to laugh. “I can bring you back to life, no problem. It’s not as complicated as a dracolich stealing your soul.”

“But won’t I owe you?”

“As if. I wouldn’t expect it from chaotic evil.”

“How sweet,” Wylla beams, and then goes to grab her coat. Shireen does the same, Bran doesn’t because he _forgot his coat_ , and given that it looks like it’s going to rain it was a very stupid idea – but Shireen won’t tell him, also because he most probably knows that already. She says her goodbyes for everyone, promises Wylla that she can have her rematch soon, grabs her bike and heads for home.

Shireen doesn’t really like the road that goes from Tommen’s to her own place – the ones from Bran’s and Wylla’s are okay, but Jaime lives on the outskirts, Shireen also lives on the outskirts, and the faster way isn’t into the town but through this road that cuts in between the woods near to that old military facility where no one knows what exactly is going on. She and Bran often theorized that the only reason why the army would even be _here_ is shady experiments like in Area 99, and Wylla always laughed them off and called them conspiracy theorists – she’s probably right, but fact is, Shireen never liked the place.

Well, she has to get home lest her father starts worrying and decides to make her curfew earlier – not that she’d resent him for it, she knows he’s trying his best and he just wants to be fair, never mind that while he’s not the warmest person around – he >loves her, even if he’s never been effusive about it. Then again, seeing how her parents’ marriage was (she understood they never loved each other soon enough, and she doesn’t miss her mother at all) and what she’s seen of her uncles during the few family reunions they had, she can understand where it comes from. That said, she’d rather keep her curfew at ten, thank you very much.

So she takes that road instead of the option that would take her twice the time and bikes forward, just as it starts to rain lightly. Good thing she had a raincoat. She stops, pulls up the hood and starts again – it’s dark, but she knows the road by heart, so it should not be a problem now.

She hears a crack of thunder as the road edges closer to the military base – she bikes on, slowing down a bit so that she doesn’t risk her tires getting accidentally cut on some rock.

Well, at least there are enough lights from the base and a few lampposts along the road – five minutes and she’ll be home, and –

Suddenly, the base goes entirely dark.

One moment there’s the usual light coming from it, the other there’s not. And the lampposts are also not working.

 _What’s going on_? She thinks, swallowing and dismounting from the bike – she should walk until electricity goes back on. Probably a power failure. Happens. It’s weird that it would happen at the base though – she has a suspicion that they’re self-sufficient anyway – but who knows? She walks on, and suddenly the temperature drops.

And – all right, it’s England and it’s early October, cold weather isn’t anything new, but right now? This is how it feels in early December.

Something’s wrong.

Something is _really_ wrong, and she should leave as soon as possible, and so she walks faster even if she can’t see the road – at some point a piece of her dress gets caught in a bush or something, but she’s too worried to care, and so she goes on, hoping to get as far from the base as possible.

She hears thunder again and it starts raining harder, and it’s colder, and there’s a strange smell rising from the grass that she can’t quite pinpoint, and then –

“Shireen?”

 _Then_ , there’s a crack of lightening – it’s a moment, but it’s enough to lighten up the entire road, and –

First, Shireen sees her cousin standing in front of her, also dragging her bike along – right, Myrcella must have taken the same road just in the opposite direction.

That’s not what she’s thinking, though.

That’s not, because _there’s something behind Myrcella_.

Or maybe _someone_.

But –

It’s not –

Shireen’s mouth had opened to greet her cousin back.

What comes out of it, instead, is a scream.

\--

“And, now we should hope that _Gimli_ ’s level sixteen is good enough, because my dear Dacey, there’s a tarrasque in the Red Keep’s dungeons!”

“Oh, fuck,” Dacey sighs, reaching for the dice. “Robb, did it _have_ to be the lovechild of a dragon and a lizard who got way too drunk at some point?

“Hey, you were the one boasting about how high of a level your dwarf wizard ended up at,” Ygritte says, leaning back in her chair. “He’s just giving you what you want, never mind that we _did_ agree that there should be dangerous monsters somewhere when planning the campaign. Never mind that you don’t know where to put your extra special gear by now.”

“Right, right,” Dacey mutters. “Guess you have a point.”

“Hey, _you_ can be dungeon master next time if you’d like it better,” Robb replies, not that Dacey will ever take him up on that offer, since –

“No,” Myrcella interrupts before Dacey can say her piece. “Sorry, but I thought there was a reason why we all decided to default it to _you_.”

“Yeah, well, as much as it pains me to say, she’s right,” Dacey says, “I wouldn’t have the damned patience to keep all of that shit straight. Very well, I’ll take my chances.”

“Right, let’s see how your _level sixteen_ manages,” Ygritte smirks. “And Robb, don’t gloat too much, if you had played that terrible character you came up with when she tried to be the dungeon master you’d have been dead a long time ago. Sorry, you can’t manage neutral evil,” she smirks.

Right. That’s a point – Robb’s usual character, which by now is a respectable level fifteen, is a lawful good paladin, as in, what _everyone would expect of him_ , Bran once told him in pseudo-distaste. He made up another one, it was a neutral evil cleric, and he failed spectacularly at playing him, and Ygritte never let him live that down. Then again, at least he’s the undisputed best of them when it comes to planning a campaign, so he’ll just gloat in being the designated dungeon master all the time. He can live with it.

Dacey rolls the dice, but she does it with a bit too much enthusiasm – it ends up on the ground, and _obviously_ that’s when Robb’s mother starts knocking on the basement door.

“Robb, it’s ten in the evening and while I’m sure that all your friends are the only girls in town whose parents wouldn’t care if they came back home later than midnight, _I_ would feel better if they would. If only because I care for the ill-disposed men they might meet.”

Ygritte laughs openly at that as Dacey picks up the dice and looks at it in disgust. “Fuck. Seven, what the hell. Hey, I guess your mom has a point, but can you check if I actually did not die even with this shitty roll?”

“Sure,” Robb tells her. “We can just pick it back up next time. Ygritte, was it at yours?”

“Yeah, my turn,” she confirms. “By the way, this _Westeros_ realm you came up with is pretty neat, we should keep it. Not the capital next time though, the North and the likes seemed way more interesting.”

“I don’t know,” Myrcella says as she puts on her coat and grabs her bag, “the Westerlands also looked nice.”

“Oh, we can just do both the next campaigns in Westeros,” Dacey shrugs as she puts on her own coat and pulls her hair in a ponytail. “So everyone’s happy. Robb, see you tomorrow. Don’t punch anyone who makes fun of you because all of your friends are _girls_ without me being present, okay?”

“I wouldn’t dare,” he says, not even bothering to keep the smile in. “I’ll walk you out.”

“No need,” Ygritte says, already on the stairs. “I’ll run so I can catch some more sleep. See you tomorrow.”

“Right. Guess I’ll go with her, I’m good. Bye!”

Myrcella is the only one left after Dacey runs after Ygritte – she’s still checking if she has everything in her bag.

“Fine, I’ll walk _you_ out.”

“You’re such a gentleman,” Myrcella jokes, “too bad you’re about the only one in our class.”

“I’m sure there’s some more bound to come your way,” Robb tells her as she buttons up her coat and goes up the stairs – he follows her out. She waves at Robb’s mom on the way out and Robb walks her to the bike she has parked in the yard.

“Well,” Robb says, “if my brother’s still at your place when you get there, tell him to scram back home before Mom gets worried sick.”

“They should be back now, shouldn’t they?” Myrcella asks. “It’s late. But sure, I will. See you tomorrow and try to not punch anyone at all, whether Dacey’s there or not.”

“I’m not swearing on that.”

“You’d better try.” She smiles and gets on her pink bike before heading off to her house. She looks radiant, such a difference from when she arrived in Winterfell (yes, sue him, he called the places in Westeros like some of the villages in their area but he was always crap at naming things) in their third high school year – she was a year ahead and there had been a lot of gossip around town when her little family unit consisting of her uncle, her brother and Myrcella herself had moved in. The gossip was also on account of who her _parents_ were – certainly no one would have assumed that the daughter of a former CEO of this uber-rich iron-producing company in London would end up living in a village in the middle of southern England with her uncle. Given that she and Tommen look a lot more like Jaime than their father, people _talked_ , but it’s not as if Robb ever was the kind of person who gave two fucks about gossip.

That stated, she was nice, and Ygritte had no quibbles talking to her first, nor to invite her to one of the D&D games she, Robb and Dacey have been playing for years. (He passed that on to Bran, to his mother’s endless dismay, but it’s all for show – Robb knows that she doesn’t mind even if she doesn’t get it. He wasn’t surprised when Tommen ended up in his brother’s D&D party.) Turns out that Myrcella was _great_ at it, even if she’s a shit dungeon master, and Robb’s never gone and thought it was weird that he was the only guy in his group. So what. Who cares. Most of the guys his age in his class are insufferable and there’s a reason why he quit the football team after two years.

He goes back home, just in time because then it starts raining hard.

Well, damn, he hopes Bran brought a raincoat to Jaime Lannister’s – he’ll catch a cold if he rides back home in this weather, and that’s when the door opens and Bran walks in.

“Huh, you got lucky,” Robb tells him. “You’d have gotten drenched otherwise.”

“Yeah, good thing that. By the way, Westeros is _awesome_.”

“Told you it would be.”

“Oh my,” Arya says, coming from the kitchen, “are you all _still_ talking about Dungeons and Dragons? Really?”

“Too bad you never had the patience for it!”

Robb laughs as Arya huffs and starts going about the two of them being impossible. At this point he can just head off to bed – tomorrow he’ll start thinking about that northern campaign. He liked the sound of it.

\--

We made it _is the only thought he can muster as he drags One through the woods just outside their prison_. Wemadeitwemadeitwemadeit, _and he hadn’t thought they could, but_ –

But he hasn’t been useful _in a while, not in the way Sir thinks, and so he wasn’t tired, and –_

 _He recognized some of those guards. They never lifted a finger when Ramsay came for_ him. _He’s not sure he feels anything much knowing that he killed them before they could warn anyone, but that’s not the point._

_One helped some – mostly with tinkering with the electricity, and now he’s bleeding out of his nose again._

_Food. They need food. A part of him says that they also need clothes, they will never blend in if they wear their sorry excuses for hospital gowns._

_Well, he thinks as he looks at One, they might never blend in because One’s head is shaved and his own isn’t but people notice someone without a finger, or someone his age with grey streaks in his hair, and you can see electrode burns on One’s temples anyway._

_But they need food. And clothes. And –_

_And that’s when he realizes that if it’s_ two _of them, they will be easier to find._

_He swallows and drags One forward. He’ll cross that bridge when he gets to it. And it will be soon, but he would rather not think about that just right now._

\--

Stannis Baratheon wakes up at six sharp in the morning, exactly five minutes before his alarm clock starts ringing. Not that it’s any news, he’s always been like this, ever since high school, and by now he has solved the issue by going to sleep way earlier than anyone pushing his forties should. Yesterday he shouldn’t have, not when Shireen was out for her game night, but his daughter is responsible and judicious (maybe too much for her age, a little voice sometimes whispers in his ear) and he’s sure she arrived home safe, same as every other time. He breathes in, stands up, heads for the bathroom, washes his face and takes in the sight of the bags under his eyes – nothing to be done about it, not when he will have to be at work until eight in the evening. He wishes he didn’t have to work overtime, but as it is he needs it – his brother Robert certainly isn’t going to help out, not from whichever place he ran off to when he decided to sell the company and disappear in South America. With most of the money, and the rest went to Cersei during the divorce, but it’s not as if he can’t make do with his accounting job at the city hall, and patience if overtime is a necessity.

He comes out of the room impeccably dressed – his suit might not be the newest but he’s not going to get caught going into work as if he’s some kind of slacker who does not take it seriously. By now it’s six-thirty – he walks out into the kitchen, ready to ask his daughter about her game night even if he honestly still has no clue about the rules of that hellish game she and her friends like to play –

But she’s not at the table as usual.

“Gendry?”

“Yeah?”

Well, at least his nephew is where he usually can be found in the morning, making breakfast for three. He came to live with them a few years ago given his father’s complete inability to care about any human beings other than himself – or for them, for that matter –, never mind that Cersei certainly did not want his _illegitimate_ kid around both before the divorce and Robert’s fleeing to South America.

(Good for Cersei’s children that while she was divorcing Robert the custody case turned out being so nasty that the judges decided they’d be better off with her brother. Jaime Lannister is hardly what Stannis would consider a model citizen, but he’s certainly a way better parent than his sister could ever hope to be. And good thing that she bribed the judge so she could keep her firstborn when she realized there was no hope she’d keep custody of all three – Joffrey is a lost cause anyway.)

He’s at the stove making pancakes and almost burns himself on the pan as he turns to look at him.

“Have you seen Shireen? She’s usually up by now.”

“Er, well, I was working yesterday evening, I came back late. I figured she was already back and didn’t go check, but it’s early, maybe she’s just sleeping in?”

Stannis breathes in deeply – he had suspected it. And he’s had the same conversation with the kid a whole lot of times, but it never quite sank in.

“Gendry, I swear I am _not_ mad at you, but how many times I told you that you do not need to take all the extra shifts you can manage, especially when you know that Baelish pays a tenth of what he should by law for these pictures? We can manage.”

“I know we can _manage_ ,” Gendry says, looking back down at the bacon strips and flipping them, “but the custody case was over just a year ago and I know how much that lawyer must have cost, I know how much they pay you and I know that it’s barely enough for three people to get by sort of comfortably, and I know I don’t have to but I still want to help out. And it was a large wedding yesterday.”

Stannis would rather hear about Gendry concentrating on his studies instead, but the lad is also sadly right and while he has managed all right up until now, Gendry helping out with groceries and the occasional bill hasn’t hurt.

“Fine, but we’re going to talk about it again at some point. I will just go and wake her up then, she has school.”

He leaves Gendry to his cooking, and then he opens the door to Shireen’s small but pristinely neat room –

And the bed hasn’t been slept in.

“She’s not there,” he says, trying not to panic as he comes back into the kitchen.

Gendry turns off the fire under the stove and sends him a worried look. “Maybe she just – slept at Wylla’s or stayed over and she didn’t call because she knew you’d be sleeping and I wouldn’t be there?”

That – that is a very good point, Stannis decides.

He’s going to verify that before worrying. He calls the Manderlys – Wylis picks up and informs him that no, Shireen hasn’t slept over and Wylla is most definitely still in bed.

He calls the Starks then – Ned picks up and tells him that yes, Bran arrived by ten PM or so, and no, Shireen wasn’t with him.

Right.

She must have stayed over at her cousin’s then.

His fingers are only slightly shaking as he punches in Jaime Lannister’s landline.

“Ouch, ‘time is it,” Lannister mutters into the phone. “Who’s this?”

“Jaime.” Stannis hasn’t quite wrapped his head around the fact that they’re on first name basis now at least while talking to each other, but when their kids are _cousins_ and they’re living in the same small town anything else would feel downright weird.

“Stannis. Can I help you?”

“Yes, actually. Has Shireen stayed over at your place?”

“What? No, she left with the others. Why?”

Stannis almost thinks of lying, but –

“Because she’s – the bed has not been slept in. She hasn’t come home.”

“ _What_? Wait, Myrcella should have come back the same way, just opposite, I’ll ask her now, she should be getting ready for school anyway.” He calls her, loudly enough, but – “That’s weird,” he says a moment later. “I’ll go get her, wait a moment.”

Lannister puts down the receiver on the table, probably, and Stannis tries to not let anxiety get the best of him as he waits. He’s sure that the silence can’t last longer than two minutes, but by the time Lannister picks up again, he’s sure his heartbeat has sped up a fraction and he doesn’t like it. At all. He doesn’t like it when things don’t go according to plan, and this is certainly not what according to plan means, and especially since it involves _his daughter_ –

“We have a problem,” Lannister says, and now _he_ sounds worried.

“What?”

“Myrcella hasn’t come in either.”

“ _Sorry_? But didn’t you notice –”

“I was beat yesterday, I went to bed when Tommen did. I trusted that she’d be home as always. Fuck, I imagine the Starks or the Manderlys haven’t mentioned her either, did they?”

“No,” Stannis confirms, dread slowly spreading through his spine.

“Fuck,” Lannister swears, and Stannis doesn’t bother correcting him when he would have any other day. “Right. Right, listen, we should just go to the police first thing. They probably just – got lost or something, but –”

“Yes,” Stannis interrupts him. “It – yes. I will see you at the station.”

“Good. I’ll be there in thirty.”

Lannister closes the call, Stannis does as well, and he can only stare at his hand lying on the phone’s handle and think, _no_.

No, no, _no_.

Not when things were finally shaping up in a good direction and when they had settled in, he doesn’t have the divorce cause looming on his head anymore, no one in town asked questions about why there’s permanent scarring on the left side of his daughter’s face and she seemed to be settling in.

It has to be some kind of horrible mistake and they probably got lost in the woods and they’ll be back before they know it.

He tells himself that over and over as he calls work and informs them that he needs a free morning.

\--

Sergeant Brienne Tarth opens her eyes wearily as her alarm rings mercilessly from the bedroom – good thing the damned thing is loud, or she’d have never heard it given that she fell asleep on the sofa watching _Emmerdale Farm_ , not that she’d ever admit out loud to anyone that it’s her guilty pleasure.

Damn, but falling asleep on her sofa watching soaps is not what she had strived for when she enrolled in the police, she thinks as she stands up, goes to turn off that hellish machine and gets straight into the shower. She had wanted to help people and be useful to the community and arrest criminals and put her martial arts and hand to hand combat and self-defense classes to some use.

Instead, even if she was top of her class at the academy, she ended up sent to a small town in the middle of bloody nowhere, probably because there were classmates with better connections than her, and – it could have been worse, because it’s not a _horrible_ town and it’s not full of complete arses, not more than average anyway, but literally _nothing_ happens here at any point. The most she does is taking fines and surely her social life hasn’t improved, since at the end of the day she never bothers to get to know anyone who doesn’t work in the station. At least she lucked out there – her boss, Inspector Seaworth, is pretty much everything you could hope for in a superior and he cares for what he does, Constable Podrick Payne is a sweet kid even if he has a long way to go when it comes to tricks of the trade, Constable Saan is also a good guy and Alysane Mormont is a better secretary than they deserve.

Still, she thinks as she gets out of the shower and dries up, this is not what she had hoped for.

Then again, it could have been worse. Sure, being stranded out here won’t help her asking for a transfer, but for the moment it’s a decent paycheck and she could be surrounded by assholes who think that women can’t be good policemen, as a lot of people in her hometown were convinced of – she’ll just go to work, take whatever fines the day brings and stop whining. Brienne puts on her underwear and uniform, grabs a chocolate bar from the fridge – she needs to restock – and eats it on her way to work. She usually walks – no need to drive for ten blocks.

She’s also usually the first to arrive – it’s the kind of small town where if you need a policeman in the night everyone knows Davos’s number, and they all rotate the night shift, but not on Sundays.

And that’s why she’s the one who runs into Jaime Lannister and Stannis Baratheon standing outside the place – they must have been standing here for a bit, she thinks, and – and this has to be bad, because even if those two are more or less related in very complicated ways, they almost never spend time together or anything. Lannister is also the kind of innocuous arsehole who’ll tease you about _everything_ , but right now he’s not smiling at all. He looks dead serious, and given that he’s wearing his shirt inside out, things are getting strange already.

What’s _stranger_ though, it’s Baratheon. He’s usually impeccably dressed and collected, but there’s sweat on his shirt’s collar, his tie is half-open and while he’s usually guarded, now there’s a certain look in his eyes that suggests that he’s scared shitless.

“Mr. Lannister,” she says politely. “Mr. Baratheon. How can I help you?”

They glance at each other – Lannister shrugs. “It’s not just you. Is Seaworth in?”

“He’ll be here in a bit, thanks for asking. And what is it that I can’t suffice in helping you with?”

He rolls his eyes for a split moment, and then he looks dead serious again. “It’s not lack of faith, _Sergeant_. But since both his daughter and my niece have disappeared at the same time, I think one person only might find it a trifle complicated to deal with.”

And – his voice trembles ever so slightly as he says it.

Brienne apologizes and tells them that she’ll open the door and ask Seaworth if he can get here faster, and as she turns her back on them and pushes the keys into the lock, she regrets deeply having wished that something more exciting than fines would end up on her plate.

Because if it’s not a scare this might be proper police work, but those two girls are both sweet and well-mannered from what she’s seen of them, and she surely wouldn’t sacrifice them in the name of _proper police work_.

\--

Davos forgoes his usual morning coffee in order to run to work – he was about to leave the house when Brienne called, and he knows that it shows that he finished dressing hastily and that he has barely slept and has not had coffee when he walks inside the premises, but given what she told him, well, he figures that can wait until later.

He’s also not so sleep-deprived that he doesn’t notice that Stannis Baratheon looks this close as a guy like him gets to breaking down in tears and that Jaime Lannister’s face is an unhealthy kind of pale.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he says, trying to keep his tone of voice as pleasant as it gets. He sits down at his desk and motions for Brienne to come over from hers – she’s his vice, she’ll hear it anyway, she might as well be over here already. “So, what exactly happened?”

Lannister and Stannis look at each other, then Lannister shrugs. “Guess I’ll go first. His daughter, Wylla Manderly, Bran Stark and my – my nephew were over at my place to play Dungeons and Dragons. I sent them off at a quarter to ten or something because it looked like it was about to rain and I didn’t want them to get drenched on the way back. Meanwhile my – my niece was over at the Starks’ for the same reason.”

“What, Dungeons and Dragons?” Brienne asks as Davos notes down what Lannister is saying.

“Yeah, she plays it with Robb Stark, Dacey Mormont and Ygritte Giantsbane, it’s a new cellar every week. Anyway, I had a long day and I was beat, so I just went to bed soon after – Myrcella’s always been pretty responsible, so I thought she’d get home. And then this morning _he_ calls me asking if Shireen stayed over. She left with the other two, but well, her way home is the same Myrcella should have taken but in the opposite direction. So I figured I’d go ask Myrcella if she knew anything about that, and her bed wasn’t slept in. So, she’s fucking missing. That’s it.”

Davos doesn’t tell him to be a little less sarcastic – it’s obvious he’s trying to make fun of the situation so that he stays more or less calm.

“Right. So _your_ niece is missing along with _his_ daughter?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Stannis says, staring straight at him. “I had gone to bed early as well, but I thought my nephew would be around to check if she came back.”

“Gendry? Was he down at that wedding for Baelish?”

“Exactly. I forgot he was at work yesterday evening, and he said he came in late and didn’t check. This morning – she wasn’t there. The bed was not slept in, either. I have called both Starks and Manderlys already, of course, but – they said everyone else has come home. Except Shireen. Obviously.”

“Well,” Davos says, “since I don’t have Maege or Tormund here I guess everyone else from Myrcella’s group also got home. I imagine they would both have taken that road cutting through the woods, next to the military?”

“Yes, it’s the fastest,” Stannis confirms. “But they both knew it. They always took it, they couldn’t have gotten lost.”

“You might never know,” Davos offers as diplomatically as he can. He looks down at what he scribbled on his notebook – damn, he really needs to wake himself up, he can barely read his own handwriting, which was always shit in the first place. Never mind that this looks bad – he knows that it’s highly unlikely two kids would get lost in _that_ forest, every person under the age of eighteen in town could navigate it with closed eyes. One, maybe. Two? Yeah, not really. Still, he’s not going to tell them _that_.

“Okay,” he says, “this is what we’re going to do. Constable Payne, would you mind going to Heddle’s and get coffee for all four of us?”

“Davos,” Stannis starts, “I don’t think it’s the case –”

“Let me finish. While Payne does that, I’m going to question the hell out of the both of you so that we don’t have to go through it again and Sergeant Tarth will help me out if she thinks I haven’t asked something I should’ve. Then we see if there’s the need to call for a search party or not. Brienne is going to come with you to your house, Mr. Lannister –”

“All things considered,” Lannister interrupts, “Jaime will do. Makes me feel old.” The joke falls slightly flat, but Davos can see a man desperately trying to not change his habits and so he just nods and corrects himself.

“Jaime, Brienne is coming with you to your house and you’re going to take a walk on that road. Stannis and I will do the same, on the other side. Then we’re hopefully going to meet in the middle and see if we can find anything, that is, unless you both have work commitments –”

“I will take the day off,” Stannis replies at once.

Lannister shrugs. “I work from home at the moment. Not a problem.”

“Right. If we find them – hopefully – we can just all go back home and laugh about it next time we swap embarrassing stories at Christmas. If we don’t, well, I guess we can start a search party the moment we’re done checking. Does that sound good?”

Both of them agree as Payne closes the door behind him and heads for the small pub in front of the station.

Davos moves on to a fresh page on his notebook.

He really, really hopes that they somehow got lost in the woods and nothing horrid will come out of this.

\-- 

_They didn’t sleep, and they’re both completely wet, but no one found them yet and he figures it’s good enough for now. At least he somehow washed, good thing since he hadn’t for the last – two weeks? He doesn’t even want to know. He takes a good look at One. No ripped scrubs, maybe he looks a tad too thin but they always fed him better, and he’s just staring at the wild flowers next to the tree they’re crouched behind. He would. One’s never seen trees in the flesh, for that matter._

_He had, not that it matters now. There’s one of those small bars on the other side of the road, just outside the town –_ he _has no clue what it’s even named, but if there’s one thing he knows is that if they both show up the way they are…_

_He breathes in. Grabs One’s shoulder. Nods towards the bar and uses his fingerless hand to motion for him to just get there already._

_“You’re not coming?” One asks, in a thin voice._

_He shakes his head. He can’t. After all, he thinks without being able to silence a bit of what he thinks is envy, One looks like a charity case, but a good charity case. He’s not malnourished, he has all his limbs in the right places, he can talk if he wants to while he hasn’t been able to blurt out a word in a damned long time, and he’s just – if they go together, either the owner calls the police or he makes enough noise that they’d be found out._

_If One goes on his own, there’s some hope he’ll take pity on the kid and call – social services. He thinks it’s named social services. Probably._

_One shakes his head, but it’s no time to be that sentimental. He pushes him out in the road and then turns his back and goes the opposite way. He’ll survive. And if they find one of them it’s going to be him, and things can’t be that much worse at this point. Can they?_

_He tells himself that his face is wet because he hasn’t washed rainwater off it since it stopped._

\--

“I’ve been meaning to ask, what did you do wrong in your past life?”

“Excuse me?”

Brienne looks up from the side of the road to glance at Jaime Lannister, who’s walking next to her and admittedly looking her way instead of the other side of the road – she doesn’t think they ever spoke to each other for more than a few words since she moved here six months ago and that wasn’t what she expected.

He shrugs and kicks a stone into the woods. “Well, since we started this charming trek into the woods you haven’t said a thing except asking if I noticed something weird, you’re sniffing around as if you actually know how to spot someone’s hidden footprints and you’re basically being _competent_ , and your predecessor had more taste for good beer than being competent. I’m pretty sure no one misses good old Kettleback. Good thing that the most that’s happened up until now has been some dumb kids breaking and entering. So, since you’re obviously wasted in this hole of a town, I was wondering who did you piss off in your past life, or otherwise you’d be somewhere, you know, with people in it. More than a few hundred, anyway. Was it that they sent you to the guys’ class and the others were jealous?”

Brienne just stares at him – what was that even? She figures it was a compliment overall, even if the latter part was what it was, but from what she sees he has a thing for trying to make fun of the situation regardless of how inappropriate, and his niece is missing. She’s just going to let him rant, if it makes him feel better.

“The classes aren’t separate,” she settles on. “And I ended up here because they picked who was going to go to _somewhere with people in it_ before we graduated.”

“Ah, the joys of a corrupted system,” he sighs, and then he goes back to looking at the other side of the road. “By the way, there’s absolutely nothing wrong here. Or well. It’s the same old fucking forest.”

“Well, we’re going to get halfway and then we’re going to wait for the Inspector. Maybe they found something.”

She doubts it, but nevertheless, no reason to assume they might have not.

Lannister doesn’t reply and says nothing for the next ten minutes. They find nothing, and she thinks they’re coming close to the middle when they pass the military base. She can see movement over there, there’s cars coming in and out, but it’s nothing new.

“Are you sure there isn’t a second path starting from here?” She asks, moving forward.

“No. There’s barely this one, for that matter. Also, actually that is weird.”

“What?”

“The bloody military. I mean, they do have people going in and out, but never at this time of the day. It’s too early.”

“And how do you know it?”

He shrugs. “Been there, done that. Not now, back in the day. Sometimes I take a walk in the morning since you can only stay holed up in that house to a point – it’s usually dead at this time. The cars start coming in at midday.”

Brienne doesn’t know how that can be related to their problem at hand, but doesn’t outright dismiss him, and goes on.

She looks at her left.

“Lannister,” she asks, dreading the answer. “What color is Myrcella’s bike?”

“Uh, blue.”

“And Shireen’s?”

“Grey, I think. Why?”

“Get over here,” she says, her voice thinner than she’d like.

“Fuck,” he swears the moment he walks up next to her. Of course he’d say that.

There are a blue and a grey bike tossed over to the side, lying in the grass.

Brienne shakes her head and moves closer, taking a quick glance – there’s no blood anywhere at least, which is a small consolation.

“Fuck,” Lannister says again, all the blood draining from his face. “Please tell me this isn’t bad news.”

Brienne figures she’ll just tell him what’s not absolutely _bad_ about this. “Well. For one, they definitely are – or were – together, whatever went down. Then, there’s no blood to be seen anywhere, so if – if anything happened, it wasn’t here. If it wasn’t raining I could try and follow some tracks, but there are animals around here on top of that, I guess, so it would be useless now.”

“So basically I should be glad there’s no bodies to be seen?”

She winces openly. “That, too, but –”

“You don’t need to sugarcoat it,” he spits, and she’s about to tell him that she’s not trying to sugarcoat anything when she hears a noise behind them. She turns – it’s Inspector Seaworth and Stannis Baratheon.

Baratheon looks even paler than Lannister and she doesn’t have to ask what’s the matter – he has a piece of raincoat in between his hands that she figures could only have belonged to Shireen.

She moves so that the Inspector can see the bikes. “No blood,” she says, “and the rest of the road seems undisturbed.”

“It’s not on the other side,” he sighs. “There’s broken bushes everywhere. We found that on one of them. Lannister, did Myrcella have green sneakers?”

“Yes. Why?”

The Inspector holds up one of them – he had it in his bag before.

No one says anything for a long, long moment.

“Well,” the Inspector says, “time to go back and put together a search party, then. Or better. Brienne, you’re in charge of the search party. I’m in charge of questioning the other kids first thing.”

Brienne does not like the sound of this at all. She doesn’t say that one of the first things you learned in the academy was that the moment you organize search parties, the chances of finding out whoever went missing alive plummet downwards.


	2. everything’s a lot tougher when it’s for real

When Shireen hadn’t shown up at school, Bran had thought it was weird, but had figured that maybe she caught a cold under all that rain from yesterday. That Tommen had not, either, was even weirder, but he figured he’d call and ask what was wrong after school.

Then Podrick Payne from the police station had showed up saying that he should come with along with Wylla, and that’s how he finds himself in the principal’s office, along with Wylla, Robb, Dacey and Ygritte, and Tommen who comes in after them, looking like he’s entirely not okay.

And then he finds out that Myrcella and Shireen are missing.

Inspector Seaworth doesn’t look like someone who’s relishing being in this position.

“Right,” he says, “since we’re all here, let’s see if we can find out something I don’t know about. I’ll give you a run-down – your friends didn’t get back home yesterday. We know that they took the road through the wood. At some point they must have met because their bikes were thrown off to the side, together. We found a piece of Shireen’s raincoat stuck on a bush. I don’t know if this is going to shed light on anything, but if any of you have a clue of what’s going on or noticed something yesterday, or could tell me what happened before they left, that’d be helpful. Probably.”

 _He’s not trying to get our hopes up_ , Bran thinks and doesn’t say. Both Tommen and Wylla are looking at him though.

“Well,” Ygritte says first, “me and Dacey, we ran off first because we figured it’d be raining and we go back the same way, Myrcella left later I guess. But it’s in the other direction, so we didn’t see her leave. There was nothing strange on our way back.”

“Yeah, the most that happened during the evening was Robb here making me fight the worst monster he could think of, and I’m sure it mauled me, but really, that was about it.”

“Hm,” Seaworth says, “I see your _dungeon master_ plays no favorites? Don’t look at me like that, I know what bloody D &D is. So, Robb, if she left later –”

“I walked her to the door,” Robb says. “It was just before Bran got home – it had to be ten or close to it. We just talked shop on the way up, she put on her coat and went off on the usual way back.”

“Hm,” Seaworth hums, and notes it down. “Kids, you left at nine forty-five, didn’t you?”

“We did,” Bran confirms. “If it helps any, I didn’t see Myrcella on the way back but I wasn’t coming from that same street.”

“Right. Anything weird with your lot?”

Bran shrugs. “Not really. We just played as usual.”

“The only thing I can think of is – I can see the military base from my window,” Wylla says. “I was closing the binders before going to bed yesterday and it was – like, no light coming from anywhere.”

Right. She lives slightly uphill outside town – you can see the entirety of the wood and the base from there.

“And like, usually it never goes away. That was weird. But that’s about it.”

Inspector Seaworth also notes that down. “Nothing else?”

Tommen shakes his head. “I went to bed just after they left. I didn’t hear a thing.” He looks on the verge of crying, which Bran can understand only too well. It’s not just his friend that went missing, it’s also _his sister_.

“This is probably going to sound like a very dumb question,” Seaworth says, “but by chance do you know if there were people who – might have harassed them, or hated them, or – anything?”

“The hell?” Ygritte blurts out. “I mean, uh, no? Okay, as far as I know Myrcella isn’t exactly popular. I mean, she hangs out with _us_.” At that, even Tommen laughs a tiny bit – it’s sort of true. Ygritte and Dacey don’t wear make-up and he thinks he’s seen Ygritte wear a skirt maybe thrice in his life, which from what Bran gathers means they’re Not Popular, whatever that means when you’re older than fourteen. And Robb could be if he wanted, Bran always thought, but since he always hangs out with Ygritte and Dacey rather than other popular people he’s not either. Which means there’s a bunch of other kids in their grade who give them shit same as those ones always hanging around Little Walder Frey do with him, but it’s really nothing that bad. At seventeen you’re immune, Bran figures – he wishes _he_ was.

“Anyway,” she keeps on, “some people made your usual dumbass crude jokes about her mother and the likes but it’s the same people who call Robb here a loser because he only hangs out with girls he doesn’t –”

 _“Thank you_ ,” Robb stops her, “maybe you can keep them for another time. Anyway, none of those idiots would actually go as far as pulling that kind of prank. They don’t care near enough.”

“Well,” Bran says, “I could say the same. I mean, there’s, you know, Little Walder and his friends –”

“Who, the nephew of that other army general who is never around the place? That deranged kid that someone dragged here once because they saw him kicking a stray cat on the side of the road?”

“… Wow, did someone?” Wylla asks, sounding interested.

“They did, but no one was too impressed by our mighty police force. So?”

“Er, he hates us? All of us? I mean, I don’t think he’d go as far as pulling that prank either, but that’s all I got. Like, Shireen wasn’t popular because, well, they made fun of her face and the likes but it’s not – not what –”

“Would make someone kidnap two people in the middle of the night,” Seaworth ends for him. Bran nods – yeah, that was about it. “Well, thank you all. I told your teachers to excuse you for the day if you just want to go back home and take a couple days off. My vice is putting a search party together and they’ll go out in the afternoon, I’ll let you and your families know as soon as we get any news. If we do.”

He stands up and leaves, and for a long, long moment neither of them says a thing. Bran figures that they all have to take the news in, and – who would even do something such as that to Shireen of all people? He’s just – he can’t believe that. He can’t. He puts a hand on Tommen’s arm just because he looks so miserable he can barely bear to look at him.

He feels so useless he can’t even put it into words and he thinks he can see a similar sentiment reflected on everyone else’s faces, for that matter.

And he _hates_ it. Which is probably why he doesn’t even think about whether it’s a good idea or not before opening his mouth and blurting out, “We should go look for them.”

“What?” Tommen sounds more surprised than anything.

“We should,” Bran says again. “It’s – I don’t want to just sit here and do nothing while I wait. All right, there are others out to do the same, but I – I want to be there, too.”

“Yeah, as if they’d let us go,” Wylla says, but doesn’t refuse.

“Er,” Robb interrupts them, “do you think Mom would appreciate it if you went off looking for Shireen _in the woods_ when _it’s exactly where she disappeared_? The moment she learns you are grounded for sure. Hell, I might be. All of us, for that matter.”

“Robb, don’t be like that. He’s got a point,” Ygritte says.

“ _Sorry_?”

“They’re our friends,” Dacey chimes. “And I see your little brother has more guts than you in that sense. I’m in.”

“That’s the spirit,” Ygritte says, high-fiving her.

“Well,” Tommen says, “I don’t think my uncle would approve, but I guess that if it’s with you…”

“Oh, for –” Robb starts. “Fine. Fine. I see I’m the only one who wouldn’t want to go behind anyone’s back but if we’re doing it then _plan_ it. First thing – Bran, Wylla, Tommen, do you all still have those walkie-talkies with a good range that you all got each other for Christmas?”

Wylla sends Robb an offended look – Bran is only too glad that Robb’s actually doing this. He’s about the only person in the family good at planning, for that matter. “How do you think we talk –”

“After your bedtime? Obviously. Fine. All of you get yours, three should work. Now, we are telling Mum that Tommen’s sleeping at our place tonight, because like hell they’ll let any of you go during the afternoon and they probably wouldn’t let us either. Wylla, you’re going to Dacey’s because it’s closer to your place. We all meet up at _our_ place at ten thirty, everyone else will be asleep by then. At that point we’re going to see how things are – bring whatever you think is necessary and if you think we’re letting you go off on your own after then, you’re dead wrong. Take it or leave it.”

“Wow,” Ygritte says, “if only that asshole Damon could see you when you get in _planning_ mode, he wouldn’t try to grab my ass as much as he does.”

“He tried what?”

“Don’t worry, she punched him in the face every other time,” Dacey says. Bran is honestly scared of Robb’s friends sometimes. “Anyway, it seems reasonable. You three have no room to negotiate given that letting you going off on your own would mean we are complete assholes. Clear?”

They are all quick to agree – Tommen even looks moderately hopeful about it now, good thing that.

“Great. Then we’re seeing each other later. And Tommen, if your uncle doesn’t want you to go please sit this one out,” Robb sighs. “I know that I’m sounding like an asshole but if I was in his place – well. I already feel bad, okay?”

“Yeah, sure, of course. I mean, you’re right. I feel a bit bad too, but – you know.”

“I guess so. Okay. Let’s go before someone actually hears us.”

Robb, Ygritte and Dacey leave first – Bran follows with Tommen and Wylla, slower.

“Guys,” Tommen says, “what do _you_ think happened?”

Wylla shrugs. “I can’t see either of ‘em getting lost. But unless there’s creepy people in that base doing experiments on humans and kidnapping them, I dunno what else could explain it. Other than the obvious. Which we’re not going to mention because they _aren’t_ dead.”

Bran shakes his head. “’Course they’re not. Let’s not even go there. And – come on, that’s stuff for bad movies. There can’t be crazy experiments in a base here. No one would pick a place this boring for crazy experiments.”

“Good point,” Tommen agrees. “Well. Guess I’ll see you later, if – if.”

“Sure. Hang in there, okay? If we don’t find them someone else will, I’m sure.” Good thing that Wylla always manages to sound like that even when she’s not, Bran thinks.

He swallows, not letting himself think of... the obvious.

It just can’t have happened.

Could it?

\--

Arya is not surprised that both her parents have decided to go off with the search party in the early afternoon – they said they’d be back by six PM and they most probably will. She’s not surprised because they are the kind of people who’d go out and do it. She had asked to go and they categorically said no, which is absolutely idiotic, since she’d be a lot better off doing that than watching her little brother at the park. But then again someone had to bring him out or he’d go stir-crazy, Sansa bailed out because she and Jeyne Poole have to study for some math text they will most likely ace, their notes are thicker than the damned book, Bran isn’t an option and anyway no one would ask him to when Shireen just vanished into thin air, and Robb has to keep an eye on _him_ , so.

Arya shrugs and goes back to her history homework – it’s about the one subject that doesn’t bore her to pieces other than PE, too bad she can’t skip all the rest. Rickon’s making some friends over where the swings are, the weather’s not too bad, she could do worse, she figures.

That’s until she hears people cackling from her left.

She closes her book and turns to assess the situation.

Oh, joy, there’s those assholes from Robb’s grade who think nothing can touch them because they’re friends with the son of some guy working for the military at the base. Well, they’re probably not wrong about _that_ given that they never got a suspension in their lives when they deserved it, but anyway, they’re standing there cackling and looking at the park’s gate, and cackling some more.

“Waters, lighten up! I’m sure that your ugly-ass sister can’t be dead, no maniac worth a damn would kidnap _that_.”

Arya glances at the gate – ah, right. That’d be Gendry Waters, Shireen’s cousin-who-has-been-living-with-them for ages and who, as far as she knows, has exactly one friend in this town. Too bad that Podrick Payne isn’t the right connection, when talking about the police force. Arya’s never talked to him or anything, they aren’t in the same circle, he’s two years older than she is and he tends to keep to himself, and now he’s putting newly printed flyers with his sister’s face on them all over the gate. There probably are some for Myrcella, as well, though she can’t see that from up close. He openly flinches but doesn’t pay them any further attention and goes on with his flyers.

Arya figures the search party hasn’t found anything yet.

“Damon,” one of those other idiots tells the first, “you sure he needs _that many_ flyers?”

“Right,” Damon agrees. “We should go and help him with that load.”

At that Gendry does turn towards the whole lot of them, clutching the flyers to his chest, and – right. Printing that stuff must have cost and Arya knows his family can hardly spare the money.

She takes a look at Rickon – he’s still playing with the other kids. She stands up and goes towards the swings.

“Hey,” she tells him, “just stay where you are, I have to deal with a couple arseholes.”

She turns her back on them, without a doubt her brother is now telling his newfound friends that they don’t want to miss the show.

“How about you go help yourself somewhere else?” Arya says, walking in the middle of the scene casually – Gendry was stuffing the flyers into his worn-out backpack and definitely had _not_ expected her to come over.

“Oh, aren’t you Robb Stark’s sister?” That’d be Asshole Number Three, Arya thinks. If she doesn’t recall wrong, he’s named Alyn or something.

“Sure,” she says, “he’s told me everything about how pathetic you are. Has been doing that since he went to high school. How about you leave? There are children here, don’t traumatize them with your face any further.”

She’s more or less expecting it when the fourth idiot tries to tackle her without even warning first – too bad that while Robb is a social pariah because he hangs around girls and Bran is one because he’s into science, Arya’s always been one because she used to be the only person in her entire school who spent years taking a bus every afternoon to learn karate in the only dojo in the area, two towns over, and she had no time to hang around with friends or anything.

Not that she ever cared. Also, assholes taller than she is who think they can take her in a moment are just the easiest, she thinks as she lands a well-placed kick in the idiot’s shin, grabs him in a choke hold and slams him down on the ground.

“We were saying,” she keeps on, making sure that she has her hand on the guy’s throat – he won’t grasp for breath anytime soon but he can’t move now, “do you want me to show you all how I got a black belt when I was twelve or are you going to scram?”

She lets Asshole Number Four go when that Damon says that she’ll regret it and tells the others to leave.

Rickon and his friends are cheering – figures. She just hopes their mothers don’t tell her mother – she’s not supposed to do that kind of thing outside a dojo.

“Hey, thanks,” Gendry says a moment later, coming up next to her. He looks like a devastated man, which – well, Arya can guess why. “I was just going to run out of Dodge, I guess.”

“That’s okay,” she replies, “what happened with your sister was horrible and they’re all complete arses, it was the least. If you want I can hang a few of those near my house.”

“Would you?” He hands over a few of the flyers – right. There are some for Shireen and some for Myrcella. She can’t help notice that the picture they used for Shireen’s is really nice. Black and white, of course, but there’s a study lightening, her hair is nicely styled and the shadows almost completely cover the scarring on her left cheek.

“Nice picture,” she says. “Sorry about –”

“Thanks. And uh, I took it.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Last year. She said she didn’t have a decent picture of herself around so I just – figured I would.”

“Well, you’re good at it,” she says, shrugging. “Listen, I have to go back, I’m supposed to be watching over Rickon even if he’d probably terrify any potential child-abductor himself. I hope the search party thing works out.”

“If only. Thanks again, really.”

“Don’t sweat it.”

Arya can’t help noticing that he has very nice hands as she watches him put the flyers back in his backpack and then moving on to the next public place where he’s most probably going to hang them. His shoulders are slightly hunched and – well, he does look completely beaten down, but then again, if it had been Robb, Sansa, Bran or Rickon how would _she_ have felt?

Probably not very differently, she admits to herself.

\--

“Social services?”

Dontos keeps his voice down, figuring that he really doesn’t want the kid to hear him – after all, he hasn’t exactly told him he was going to call social workers.

Still, he doesn’t think he can handle this at all. It was weird enough when he heard a knock on the door and found himself in front of this kid who has to be sixteen at most, is wearing wet hospital scrubs, a bit torn for that matter, has no shoes, weird scars on his head and who had muttered something about being hungry and if he could please have some food.

Dontos, who is _not_ a complete bastard, thank you very much, let the kid in – it was a slow day and no one was in. He’s tried to ask a few questions while the kid ate some chips, but he couldn’t get a name or an age out of him. Given the weird scars and the way he can only make eye contact for a short amount of time he figures he escaped from some fucked up place, but Dontos Hollard is in no way, shape or form equipped to deal with that.

Which is why he’s calling social services.

The guy on the other side asks for information. Dontos tells him that yes, the kid showed up in the early afternoon, yes, he was alone, no, he doesn’t talk much, no, he has no other information. They say that they’re going to send someone over in a short while – Dontos thanks them and closes the call, then goes to the door and turns the _closed_ sign over the door. Better not having people around, if the place is going to crawl with social workers.

He kind of feels bad for not having told the kid – he seems sweet, other than the obvious, but he’s just – he barely even knows what to do with children period, never mind traumatized ones. He cleans a bit around the tables, figuring the kid will just stay in the kitchen, and when someone knocks on the door, it’s no longer than half an hour since he called. Well, they were quick, sure thing.

He opens the door and finds himself in front of a guy a lot younger than he’d have pictured – he’s in his early twenties, dressed in a nice stylish suit, a pink handkerchief in the breast pocket. He has long dark hair tied back and brown eyes, and large lips and he’s smiling in an affable way, even if the first thing Dontos thinks is that it’s _slightly_ off.

He’s probably making it up.

“Mr. Hollard,” the man says. “You called, didn’t you?”

“Indeed. Thanks for coming here so quickly.”

“No problem at all. We all want to help our youth,” the guy says. “Is the child you spoke of in the kitchen?”

Dontos would like to state that he’s more on the teenager side, but it’s hardly an issue. “Yeah. Should still be there. I’ll show you –”

“Thank you, but I think there will be no need.”

The last thing Dontos sees is the guy taking out a gun and aiming.

He doesn’t even have time to scream – the gunshot rings out a moment later.

(He couldn’t have known that his guest has better hearing than most, and he ran from the backdoor the moment he heard the call. But at this point, he’s way beyond caring for anything.)

\--

“Inspector, can I talk to you a moment?”

“Brienne, how many times did I tell you it’s _Davos_?”

She blushes ever so slightly before nodding. “Sorry. Old habits die hard. Davos, do you have a moment?”

“As many as you like,” he sighs, leaning on his desk. “I imagine you’re back from the search party and the girls are still missing, aren’t they?”

“You’re not wrong,” she agrees. “I sent both Lannister and Baratheon home and told them to get some sleep – who knows if they will. Anyway, no one found the girls, but – I’ll show you.” She reaches into her jacket’s pocket and takes out a small plastic bag – Davos doesn’t know what he did right to deserve a vice competent enough that she actually uses evidence bags. She hands them over, and –

Now that’s weird.

“Are these hospital scrubs?” There are two pieces of cloth in the bag. They do look like scrubs. Pale blue.

“Yes, but – there’s also _these_.” She hands him another bag, and this one is full of ripped pieces of scrubs. These ones aren’t blue, though – they’re pink.

And they’re also – well, whoever tore them, also tore skin, because there’s a bit of blood on them.

“No one noticed them, since they were all looking for people, but – I thought it was fairly strange. They were on a few bushes.”

“All in the same area?”

“Pretty much. In the part of the road nearest the military base.”

“The one where electricity short-circuited yesterday?”

She nods. “If Wylla Manderly wasn’t lying, but I doubt it.”

Davos nods – she’s really wasted in this stupid town. “I can see that you’re thinking something. Do share with your boss, please.”

She rolls his eyes, then shrugs. “I’m not thinking anything specific, but even if it doesn’t seem tied together – two girls disappear together on the same night the electricity goes off and then I find _hospital scrubs_ in the woods? Near that place? Even if it’s two completely different things there’s still something shady going on there.”

“You have a point,” Davos agrees, “but no one is going to hand me a search warrant on that account.”

“No,” she agreed. “However – Lannister said he worked for the military at some point. Maybe I could ask him if he can pull some strings or something and I can bring him with? At least he’d feel useful, I guess.”

Davos isn’t sure that it might work, but – it’s an idea. At worst, they get sent back. And while she looks that way, he can concentrate on putting together tomorrow’s search party.

“Very well,” he says, “try tomorrow if he agrees. Let me know if you sniff anything interesting. I’ll take the search party and check how Stannis is holding up – he really didn’t need that kind of blow. If you need some more people, take Pod.”

“Fine,” Brienne agrees. “I don’t think I will, the fewer the better at this point, but I’ll definitely let you know as soon as I have something. If I do. But do you agree that there’s something fishy going on there?”

“I’d be surprised if there wasn’t. It’s the military after all.”

She laughs out loud, apologizes for it and then says she’ll go home and arrange things for tomorrow in the morning.

He also should do the same, Davos figures. But he’ll drop by Stannis’s place first – they’ve been on friendly terms since he moved here some five years ago and he’s sure that he’s not taking it as well as he’s pretending to, and he’s not in a hurry to go back to his empty two-rooms apartment.

He glances at the picture on his desk – his wife and kids are smiling up at him from behind the glass.

If only they could do it again for real, he thinks, and then pushes it face down on the desk.

\--

Up until now, Bran thinks, it couldn’t have gone better.

Well, all things considered.

Tommen showed up at five in the afternoon looking sort of guilty – his uncle told him that if he just wanted to have some fun and distract himself of course he could go sleep at the Starks’ and so he came. He said he didn’t feel too great lying about it, but he still came, didn’t he?

Mom fixed up a quick dinner, both her and Dad came back from the search party with empty hands. Bran can notice Robb asking questions they can’t know have a pattern – mostly about where they went searching. Sansa asks if she can go to Margaery Tyrell’s birthday party tomorrow evening – their parents share a look and Mom agrees as long as she goes with someone who can drive her back or come with her. Sansa sighs but doesn’t disagree – well, good for her. Bran doesn’t know why she would even care about Margaery’s birthday party that much, but whatever. He has more urgent things to think about.

As in, _looking for his friend_.

His parents, as usual, go to bed at ten.

At ten thirty, Robb knocks on his door.

“Come on,” he says. He has a backpack and a heavy jacket with him. “Grab those phones and let’s go from the back.”

Bran takes his backpack and Tommen does the same and they all head for the kitchen – Wylla, Ygritte and Dacey are already in the backyard.

“Right,” Robb says, “let’s just check things before leaving. Phones?”

Bran, Tommen and Wylla immediately produce the walkie-talkies – their parents hadn’t been too sure about that being the Christmas present they wanted to give each other last year, but they turned out to be _very_ useful for talking without occupying the phone line and spending extra money on it, since they have a great range. And sure, maybe they use them past their bedtime, but there’s no harm in it.

“Good. What else do we have?”

“I’ve got food and water,” Wylla says, showing a backpack half-filled with energy snacks that could last them two days, probably. “Hey, someone had to worry about it if we’re staying out long.”

Robb groans. “Right. I hadn’t even thought about that. Good, you have that covered. Anyone else brought some?”

“I did,” Ygritte says, “not as much, though. I have a flashlight and that compass you forgot at my house ten years ago and never took back.”

“I have a compass, too,” Bran says.

“I couldn’t grab much from the house but I have a few raincoats,” Tommen says.

“Okay. Sounds like we all have it covered. Now, we know that they searched in the area where they found the bikes. They _didn’t_ go to that part of the wood near Hollard’s crappy restaurant. I guess that they thought it was useless to go towards the other side, but since they found nothing there, we could check that area. It’s not even that far.”

“Good idea,” Dacey agrees, “but there’s two paths over there. I mean, you can go towards the restaurant or further into the woods.”

“That’s why we have the phones. We’re splitting when we get there – and I don’t want to hear protests here.” He takes a quick look at their group. “We’ll just see at the intersection. Let’s go already.”

They leave, trying to be as silent as possible – they’re going on foot, it seems like, but then again it’s not too far, is it?

“I hope we find something at least,” Tommen sighs.

“Hey,” Wylla replies, “don’t be that negative. They haven’t turned up dead yet or anything, and it’s seven of us. We are finding something tonight. I have a good feeling.”

“And even if we don’t, next time we go hiking for science class we’ll have the best grades,” Bran supplies, if only because the atmosphere is way too heavy right now. Tommen does laugh a bit at that, good thing, and they keep it up for the next fifteen minutes or so, until they get to the split. One way they’re going to Hollard’s, the other they’re going in the woods. Robb glances around and then seems to be taking a decision.

“Listen,” he says, “there’s no light over there and – I’d feel better if the least people go there. Let’s just – Ygritte, you think you can handle them?”

“Who do you take me for?”

“Hey –” Wylla starts, sounding already offended, but Robb shakes his head. “Everyone but Dacey and me is going with Ygritte towards the restaurant, we’re going in the woods. Listen, if anything happens Hollard has a phone and it’s closer to the main road, and if it’s two of us and we don’t have to make sure anyone’s disappeared somehow we’ll be quicker. I’m taking one of those phones, you can decide who takes the other two.”

Thing is – no one likes it but he’s obviously right, and Bran can’t blame him for being paranoid since he wasn’t too big on this impromptu search party idea. So he gives Robb his walkie-talkie, they try it to see if it works when Robb and Dacey are on the other side of the road and he watches them disappear into the woods.

“Well,” Wylla says, “let’s just go before it’s dawn and we spent the entire night on the side of the road.”

“I like determined people.” Ygritte slaps all of them on the back hard enough that they almost recoil and they start on the way to the restaurant.

The good thing is that their way isn’t too dark – the trees aren’t too thick and there’s enough moonlight to see around even without the flashlight. The ground is still wet, so he doesn’t even bother looking down – whatever traces might be around are long gone.

“Do you really think there’s a chance they might have come here?” Tommen asks. “I mean, it’s… pretty far from where they found the bikes.”

“Well, if they ran they might have,” Bran says. “It’s weird that they would have gotten lost here, though.”

“If they got lost, that’d have happened in the other direction,” Ygritte agrees. “Still, might be worth taking a look.”

“Why is the restaurant closed?” Wylla asks when they see the building across the road. “I mean, it’s always open at this hour. It’s not too late.”

“Huh. Right, _now_ that’s weird. The food in there stinks but it’s the only place near the freeway in miles, he’d never close before one in the morning.” Ygritte doesn’t sound too convinced about it either. “Right. Stick close, we’re checking it out. Or better, I am and you’re staying behind me.”

“Ygritte, you’re like, seventeen?”

“Still older than you, Wylla. Now shut it and tell me one of you bought a baseball bat.”

“Er, not really?” Wylla says. “Neither of us plays baseball anyway. I’ve got a slingshot, though.”

“Which I can’t use. Well, keep it ready.”

That’s when Robb calls them.

“Guys?”

“Robb, you have to use the password,” Bran replies, figuring that it might lighten up the atmosphere. Never mind that Robb always forgets about it.

“Yeah, whatever. Listen, how is it going over there?”

“We’re heading towards the restaurant. We haven’t seen anything this far. What about you?”

There’s a longer pause than Bran likes. Then – “We found – something that has nothing to do with Myrcella or Shireen, but – whatever. Never mind, let’s talk later. If you find anything weird call, okay?”

“Heard you.”

He doesn’t ask Ygritte what she thinks Robb might have found out and they move close to the entrance. Which is also closed.

“Now that’s bloody strange,” Ygritte mutters, and tries the handle. It opens. She takes a look inside and slams the door closed.

“What –”

“We need to go in the back. Now. I mean, we’re going to the back and then I’m calling Robb.”

“What happened?” Tommen asks.

“You don’t want to see it. Ah, shit, wait a moment.” She grabs her sweater and runs the bottom part of it over the handle. “Like hell I need Seaworth to check for fingerprints and find out I was here. Come on. Let’s go. Someone shot him in the head.”

“ _What_?” Wylla almost shrieks.

“You heard it right. Go. We’re not going back from the front.”

Bran doesn’t let her say it twice – he runs along until he arrives at the back of the restaurant, where the kitchen is, and –

“Guys, the door is open!”

Ygritte rushes next to him – she takes in the sight. The door is open, there are footprints on the inside – someone going in and out.

Bran takes a better look at them. “Well, whoever that was, they’re barefoot. And they can’t be older than Robb,” he declares.

“And how do you know that?” Ygritte asks.

“The size,” Tommen says quietly. “I mean, I guess, but I’m sure Uncle Jaime’s shoes would leave bigger prints.”

“Yeah,” Bran confirms. “It’s more or less Robb’s size. Maybe a bit smaller, but then again Robb could wear Sansa’s shoes when he was fourteen. Listen, don’t ask me why I know, he’d kill me if I told you.”

(As in, Arya dared him to try them. Sansa never knew, good thing that.)

Tommen, who has their only other flashlight, turns it towards the path going into the woods. Most probably everyone notices broken branches along the way.

“Oh, damn it, we’ll call Robb when we’ve figured this one out. Come on.” Ygritte lets them go before her and follows, and that’s why Bran is the first one hearing the noise coming from behind a tree not long later.

“What – Tommen, get over here! Bring that light.”

He hears another noise. Tommen moves near him, bringing the flashlight, and for a moment Bran hopes against hope that it’s Shireen or Myrcella behind that tree, but then the light hits the person crouching on the ground in the face and –

“And who are _you_?” Bran blurts out.

“Bran, come on,” Tommen hisses, “I don’t think that was the right question here.”

“What’s going on?” Wylla almost crashes into Tommen, slingshot in hand, and Bran grabs her wrist and pulls it down the moment he sees it – not a good idea, probably.

Given that the kid sitting in front of them looks pretty much Sansa’s age, is wearing blue hospital scrubs, has a buzz cut that lets you see some weird scars on the sides of his head which aren’t covered by his hair and is looking up at him with large grey eyes that for a moment remind Bran of Arya, and looks scared out of his mind on top of that, the slingshot is just – not necessary.

The kid opens his mouth and closes it, taking them in – he’s probably realizing they can’t be _that_ dangerous.

“Oh,” Wylla says, “guess you ran from the kitchen?”

“Or from the base,” Bran corrects her.

“Guys, what – _what_ ,” Ygritte blurts out when she finally catches up to them. For a moment she also stares at the kid, who is staring back at them and looking like he doesn’t know what to do with any of them. He’s also looking at each of them fairly frantically – Ygritte shakes her head and drops sitting down on the ground after moving in front of them.

“Okay,” she says, “let’s just have one person ask the questions. You were in that restaurant before?”

He nods.

“Guess you ran when they shot the owner?”

At that, the kid’s lip trembles ever so slightly. Ygritte’s eyes go narrow. What –

“Did they shoot him because of you?” Bran whispers, putting two and two together.

He doesn’t expect an answer, but –

“Yes,” the kid replies, quietly, but – yes, he’s _definitely_ Sansa’s age at least. His voice isn’t pitched high at all.

“Let me guess,” Ygritte says, “whoever shot him was from the military base.”

“Yes.”

He’s also speaking like someone who either hasn’t said a word in years or screamed themselves raw a short time ago, Bran decides. His voice is a rasp, at this point.

“Right. What’s your name?”

The kid gives her a complete baffled look. Then he shows her a tattoo on his inner arm. There’s a _1_ inked on it. Ygritte shakes her head and looks up at Bran. “Go call Robb and tell him. I’ll try to find out his name or something,” she mouths before turning back to the kid.

Bran nods once, motions at Wylla to come with him because he might have had the idea to come here but he doesn’t think he should be alone if he leaves the others even for a bit, and he presses the button faster than he’s ever done that in his life.

Robb picks it up a moment later.

“Robb, we found – we found –” Bran starts, and he doesn’t even know how to put it.

“One of _them_?” Robb’s voice croaks from the other side.

“No. No, it’s this – this other kid, he was hiding near the restaurant, but – Ygritte went to check on the restaurant first and said we shouldn’t go in, she said they shot the owner? And then we heard some noise and we followed it and she went after us, right? And he was hiding near that huge tree where you used to bring us to play hide and seek, and – he’s like, I think he’s Sansa’s age or something, and he’s not talking much and has a weird tattoo and he’s wearing scrubs –”

When Robb interrupts him, he doesn’t expect the question that follows.

“Wait. Scrubs? What color?”

“Uh, blue. Why?” Why would he even ask that?

“Because we also found some along the way. But they’re not blue. Listen, can you ask him if he’s alone? If he’ll answer, but –”

“Ygritte is trying to, I’ll let you know if she finds out. Robb, this is weird, he has some strange scars, and –”

Bran stops when he hears a weird noise coming from the other side of the line, and it’s not static.

“Wait a moment, I’ll contact you later,” Robb croaks, and then he switches off the walkie-talkie. Bran shrugs and goes back to where Ygritte and Tommen are.

“No, I mean your _name_ ,” Ygritte is saying. “Like, I’m Ygritte. He’s Tommen. Those two behind us are Bran and Wylla.”

“One,” the kid says again, showing the tattoo.

“Oh, fuck me,” Ygritte says, a dawning look of horror on her face. “Are you telling me your name is a _serial number_?”

The kid shrugs. That was a yes, evidently.

“That’s ridiculous,” Wylla declares. “Your name can’t be a serial number.”

“I’m not calling you _One_ ,” Bran agrees at once. He doesn’t know when he’s decided that whatever happens he’ll have plenty good reasons to use an actual name for the other kid, but – honestly. What’s that even about?

“Isn’t there one you’d like better?” Tommen asks.

The kid looks back at him as if he’s completely gone mad.

“Guys, no,” Ygritte declares. “Okay. There’s got to be – _one_ isn’t going to work.”

Bran thinks about it a moment. “Well, Jon sounds like _one_? More or less?”

If he’s not wrong, the kid seems to perk up ever so slightly when he says it.

“It’s a _name_ , at least,” Ygritte says. “So, do you like it? I mean, better than – _one_.”

“I – yes?” 

Bran feels very, very uneasy at how it looks like _One_ – Jon? – is seemingly _thinking_ about it. But – 

“I do.”

“Robb told to ask him if he ran away on his own,” Bran tells Ygritte.

“What? Why would – ah, fine, costs nothing. Hey. Listen, was it just you escaping?”

He shakes his head. “No. It – was two. Of us. But – he thought – splitting was better.”

Bran nods and grabs the walkie-talkie again. “Robb?” He says without making sure Robb’s listening. “He said he ran from the base with someone else! Robb? Robb!”

“I can see that,” Robb breathes back into the walkie-talkie, and then he shuts off the communication.

What?

“I, uh, I think they found whoever else was with him.” And One – _Jon_ – he definitely perks up at that. “I mean, my brother and another friend of ours. I guess they’ll call back.”

“I hope so, because we really should leave.” Ygritte doesn’t sound amused at all. “Whatever happened at the restaurant is not good, and this is just – well, we did find someone, after all. And you can’t be in that thing,” she sighs. “Wylla, give him a raincoat.”

Wylla immediately produces a blue one from her backpack and hands it over to Jon, who puts it on gingerly – that’s when Dacey contacts them.

“Bran? You all there?”

“Yeah. What’s going on?”

“Go back home. All of you. We’re doing the same the moment Robb convinces our guy to come with – he’s really badly off. I mean, at least it seems like yours is talking, this one isn’t doing that either. Anyway, he said we’re all meeting back there – if you don’t see us by the time you get there, go down to the basement and we’ll figure that out. Don’t wait up for us now and scram. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Good. See you later.”

The communication dies down again at that – everyone else has heard. Ygritte shrugs and stands up, offering a hand to Jon.

“Well, looks like we’re meeting your friend at Robb’s place. Come on, you can’t stay here and neither can we.”

Jon looks up at her. Then he reaches out, grabs her hand and lets her pull him up to his feet before tightening the raincoat across his waist.

Bran really, really can’t wait to be home. If the woods looked creepy before, now that he looks at the weird burn scars on Jon’s face the atmosphere is beyond that.

He heads for the way back and hears all the others following.

\--

“Fuck,” Dacey says, “this is _dark_.”

“Hey, you could have just said you’d have rather kept an eye on the kids, you know.”

“Hell no, I never said I had a problem with it.”

Good thing, Robb thinks as they move forward – their flashlights aren’t worth much. The trees are so thick that they can barely see the path ahead. The ground is all damp, on top of that.

“Well,” he says, “if they went this way I think that it wouldn’t be a surprise that they got lost, but it doesn’t look like it.”

“Yeah, unless they were running. What the hell?”

“What?”

“That bush ahead. Look at that.”

Robb follows her to it and – huh. There’s something pink stuck in the branches. He grabs it and turns it over under the light. “What – _hospital scrubs_?”

Dacey takes it from him. “Right. Looks like it. Do I have to remind you the only hospital around here is in the next town over?”

“No,” Robb says, shaking his head. “Well, at least we can be sure that there’s something wrong going on here.” He pockets the piece of cloth and turns the flashlight to the next bush over – there’s… another piece?

Dacey heads over there. “Robb, this one is bloodied.”

He swallows and decides to check on the others. He presses what he hopes is the right button on the walkie-talkie.

“Guys?”

“Robb, you have to use the password,” Bran says, but it sounds like he’s finding it funny.

“Yeah, whatever. Listen, how is it going over there?”

“We’re heading towards the restaurant. We haven’t seen anything this far. What about you?”

He swallows. “We found – something that has nothing to do with Myrcella or Shireen, but – whatever. Never mind, let’s talk later. If you find anything weird call, okay?”

“Heard you.”

Dacey hands him the other piece of scrub. This one is indeed covered in blood, slightly.

“What do you make out of this?”

He doesn’t like what he’s making of this, but he might as well have it out. “The only place around here that’s not – well, the restaurant or the nearest house, and I doubt there’s any people in scrubs in there, is that bloody military base. Where according to Wylla weird stuff was happening just while Shireen and Myrcella were going home. If there’s nothing fishy going on there I’d be surprised.”

“Yeah, I was thinking the same. Still, if there’s scrubs around, someone must have worn them.”

“You mean, someone might have escaped from there?”

“Just wearing scrubs? I don’t know, but –”

“Never mind. Someone that desperate might have. Well, the first was on that bush. The next – that’s a path, isn’t it?”

“Narrow as hell, but sure.”

“Hm. Well, guess we should check it out then. I mean, if Myrcella and Shireen disappeared next to the base, maybe – maybe if someone who was inside and ran off that night they could have seen them?” Robb knows that it’s the kind of reasoning completely grasping at straws, but at this point he has to figure out what’s going on here, since they’ve gone this far.

Dacey follows him – the path is so small they can’t walk side by side – and he finds a few other pieces of cloth along the way. In one case, there’s blood on the bush itself.

Robb is about to ask her if she’s getting as creeped out as he is, but then the walkie talkie beeps and he almost screams for how it startled him.

“Yeah?” He says, grabbing it. “Bran?”

“Robb, we found – we found –”

“One of _them_?” Robb almost hopes for a moment that they actually did, but –

“No. No, it’s this – this other kid, he was hiding near the restaurant, but – Ygritte went to check on the restaurant first and said we shouldn’t go in so something bad went down there, but she wouldn’t say what, and then we heard some noise and we followed it and she went after us, right? And he was hiding near that huge tree where you used to bring us to play hide and seek, and – he’s like, I think he’s Sansa’s age or something, and he’s not talking much and has a weird tattoo and he’s wearing scrubs –”

Robb was barely registering that conversation, but the moment Bran says _scrubs_ –

“Wait. Scrubs? What color?”

“Uh, blue. Why?”

“Because we also found some along the way. But they’re not blue. Listen, can you ask him if he’s alone? If he’ll answer, but –”

“Ygritte and is trying to, I’ll let you know if she finds out. Robb, this is weird, he has some strange scars, and –”

Then Robb hears a noise.

Which isn’t coming from the other side of the line.

“Wait a moment, I’ll contact you later.” He switches off the walkie-talkie, but he can’t hear anything else.

“Dacey? You heard that?”

“Yeah,” she says, “it was – it felt like those wild cats walking by your garden. I think it was over there.”

“Right. Reason says we should stop here,” Robb sighs.

“Which is why we’re going to be idiots and go ahead, will we?”

“Most probably. God, what is this fuckery,” Robb sighs, and walks ahead. He goes slow, and then he hears that noise again. It was some branch getting broken – the woods are so silent it’d be hard to miss it. And –

It’s _near_.

Robb turns a corner in the path and raises up his flashlight and –

“Robb?” Bran’s voice croaks from the other side of the walkie-talkie. “He sort of said he ran from the base with someone else! Robb? Robb!”

“I can see that,” Robb breathes.

_I can see that, indeed._

“Christ,” Dacey whispers, staring ahead.

Robb can feel that, too. There’s indeed someone in front of them. From the looks he does seem around Robb’s age if not a bit older, though given that he’s way too thin and has a few streaks of white in his otherwise raven-black hair he can’t really be sure. If only that was the weirdest thing.

The guy is indeed wearing the blasted pink scrubs, all more or less torn – he has a couple of nasty cuts on both arms and hands, which explains the blood in the bushes, except that Robb can see that someone cut off his damned ring finger on the left hand. He also has some weird scars on his chest and on his ankles, never mind that his feet are also bleeding since he has no shoes, he flinched first thing when Robb pointed the light in front of him and he’s shaking like a leaf.

But what’s creepier is that he’s not making a single sound.

“Dacey,” Robb whispers, moving back, “whatever this is, if the other one is as bad off – well, sounds like he wasn’t if he was talking to them, but – tell them to go back home bringing him with, we’re just going straight back and meet there. Tell them to bring him to the basement and we can figure it out when we’re all there.”

“So, _he_ ’s coming with us too?” She hisses, nodding at the other guy – he’s not looking at either of them now but he’s not even trying to escape.

“Have you seen him? I’m not letting him die of cold here. Or get found by – whoever it is that they’re running from. Go tell them, I’ll just – crowding’s not a good idea.”

“Right. I’ll be over there. Be careful.”

She squeezes his arm and leaves – she stops far enough that he can hear her speaking but not what she’s saying. Good.

He swallows and takes a step forward – the guy flinches, and well, damn, Robb’s had the light pointed at him but he probably hasn’t seen _his_ face yet.

“Hey,” he says, trying to keep his tone calm, “whoever it was you’re running from – I’m not one of them.” He points the flashlight at himself, keeping it vertical so that the light hits his face. The guy looks up at him then, tentatively, and lets out a small, relieved breath when he obviously doesn’t recognize him from wherever he ran from. He keeps his other hand upwards, figuring the least threatening he looks the better it is.

“Listen, uh, I’m Robb, I’m turning eighteen next month, me and Dacey over there and some other people were out to look for a couple friends who disappeared and I swear I have nothing to do with – I don’t know, but I guess you were in the military base, weren’t you?”

The guy goes tense again.

Damn, he shouldn’t have mentioned. “No, hey, really, I have nothing to do with them but we just worked it out – it was the only place anyone wearing scrubs would come from and there was a short-circuit there last night. And – my brother and his friends, uh, they found someone else. Dressed like you. He said two of you ran. Guess you’re the other one?”

The guy gives him a very tentative nod. Now that Robb has come slightly closer he can see that he also has weird-looking scars around his fingernails. Christ, he hopes no one tore them out. He also smells like he hasn’t had a proper bath in ages, even if he’s drenched now, but Robb wishes that was the main problem.

“Listen, I told – I told my brother to get your friend to our place. We have a basement, I kinda moved there for that matter, and – I can’t – I’d feel like shit leaving you here. Just – you can come with and you can take a shower and we’re going to try and sort this out, but really, I swear we have nothing to do with them. Fuck’s sake, I haven’t even graduated high school.”

He holds the other guy’s stare, figuring that if he doesn’t then he wouldn’t look like he means it, even if he feels sick just looking at how the poor guy seems to shake on his feet every other moment.

He swallows and holds a hand out, though not pushing it in the guy’s face, and holds his stare.

 _Something_ must have convinced him because he suddenly moves ahead and takes it – fuck’s sake, someone _skinned the guy’s hand on the outside_ , Robb notices it the moment they touch, but he’s not going to overthink it.

“Right,” he says, and helps him out of his corner and on the path – the guy lets his hand go the moment they’re on even ground. He’s still shaking like a leaf.

Dacey gets there a moment later. “They said they’re going. Ygritte said that there was something very shady going on at the restaurant but she wasn’t going to say out loud. Is he coming with us?”

“Yeah,” Robb replies. “Damn, Tommen had all the raincoats, did he?”

“I think so, but sure as hell neither of us has one. Oh, I –”

“Never mind.” He takes off his own jacket and moves to put it on the guy’s shoulders. “Just take it before you freeze. _Really_.”

Robb doesn’t think he’s ever seen anyone looking at him that gratefully in his entire life.

Fuck, this is bad.

\--

Ygritte has honestly no bloody clue how all of their party is fitting in the Starks’ basement or how they managed to get in without waking everyone up, but now that they did and she can assess the situation correctly, she’s sure of a few things. First, that she was always right to distrust the military on principle – if they thought that _Jon_ was bad off, they hadn’t seen the other unnamed one, who came in wearing Robb’s jacket, had looked relieved for a moment when he noticed his partner in crime sitting with them and then had shaken his head and – well. Right now he’s currently huddled under Robb’s bed and even if Bran did try to convince him to come out, he hasn’t moved an inch.

Second, that whatever went happened to Myrcella and Shireen, well, she’ll be fucked if it doesn’t have something to do with whatever’s going on at the base.

Third, that there’s no way three people can sleep in here – there’s Robb’s bed, there’s a mattress on the ground where she’s slept over a few times and there’s the table where they play D&D, but there’s a reason why whenever Dacey came for sleepovers they were always at Ygritte’s place – her room is larger.

Fourth, that there’s no way they can go to the police with this, and that’s exactly what she says before anyone tries to propose it.

“Like hell,” Robb agrees, “I mean, Seaworth and Tarth would see how it is fairly soon, but they’d have their hands tied.”

“Are you sure you didn’t see our friends while you, uh, escaped?” Wylla asks Jon – at least someone has no issues asking _straight_ questions, Ygritte figures. He shakes his head.

“No,” he replies quietly. Well, he’s not chatty, but she can imagine why. Sort of. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Ygritte cuts him off. The last thing they need is making the guy feel bad. He’s pretty much swimming in one of Robb’s old sweaters and pajamas, he’s just not filling them up even if they’re the same size, but she has a feeling that they’d look even worse on his mate under the bed.

“Uh,” Tommen says, his voice dropping to a whisper, “does your friend there have a name or what? Because that’s – weird.”

Jon makes a fairly pained expression. “It’s complicated,” he finally blurts out. Then he says nothing else.

Robb is sending worried glances at the bed, Dacey is drinking a Coke in silence and handing a few others over from the small fridge Robb keeps in the corner. Tommen, Wylla and Bran all take one, Ygritte does as well and then – well, the pack is over and it was the last one. She shrugs and opens the can, then hands it over to Jon. “You want any? You look like you could use some sugar.”

He looks at her, and damn but those grey eyes are somehow familiar even if she can’t quite place them. He takes it. “Thanks,” he says quietly, and then takes a sip.

She doesn’t break down laughing out of pure restraint, but his face as he drinks is completely – she’s never seen anyone looking that _blissed_ at sipping fucking Coke.

“Keep it,” she decides. “I can get one later.”

“You never had any?” Tommen asks, sounding fairly outraged. Jon shakes his head.

Ygritte stares at the tattoo on his arm and wants to murder someone. Who even brands people like pieces of cattle?

Robb is looking literally pained and hasn’t said a word since they started handing out drinks. He stares down at his can and hands it over to her, shaking his head.

“Robb?” Bran asks. “What – what do we do now? I thought that maybe _he_ …” He nods towards Jon. “I mean, if tomorrow morning he knocks on the door Mom wouldn’t turn him away, right?”

“Bran, I don’t know if anyone finding out _he_ exists is a good idea. Or _they_ exist,” Tommen points out.

Jon’s face kind of falls a bit, Ygritte can’t help noticing.

Robb shakes his head. “If they come down here they’ll find him, too,” he says, nodding towards the bed, “and something tells me it’s a bad idea. I mean, no, Mom wouldn’t turn him out and neither would Dad, but word comes out someone else is staying here? I’m betting money that whoever turned up at the restaurant would know. They were looking for you, weren’t they?”

“Yes,” Jon confirms. Then he also nods towards the bed.

“For him as well?”

He nods, his shoulders flinching ever so slightly. Ygritte hears a noise from under the bed – it was definitely someone bumping their head against the bottom.

“Right. We need a plan,” Robb says. “Good thing we’re excused from school tomorrow. Listen, he should stay here.” He nods at the bed.

“It’s fine,” Ygritte decides. Hell, at this point it’d be an act of charity at worst and one of decency at best. “Jon here can come back with me – my uncle’s not home for the next week and I have two beds in my room, it’s better than your basement. If you’re fine with that, of course.”

“Anywhere,” Jon replies. “Just… not _there_.”

“Yeah, not happening.”

“Good,” Robb says. “Listen, Tommen’s sleeping upstairs anyway, so – you can all come back tomorrow. In the morning. So we can discuss things with a clear head and just – we all need sleep, I think. Jon, uh, if you want to take some more clothes from that drawer just go for it, I haven’t worn that stuff in a while.”

Ygritte can’t help noticing that Robb seems to be looking at Jon as if he also thinks he’s somehow familiar, but she doesn’t point it out.

“Thank you, but – it was enough.”

As if. “Yeah, grab some of his old shoes at least. Right. We’ll be over tomorrow. Dacey, you’re bringing Wylla home?”

“Yeah, sure. Come on, let’s go – tomorrow we can plan, I guess.”

Ygritte helps Jon stand up, doesn’t miss the slightly guilty look he sends in the bed’s direction, but also notices that Robb’s looking the same way.

“Robb?” She asks.

“Yeah?”

“Are you going to, you know?” She nods towards the bed.

“Yeah, I got it covered. Go and get some rest. And be careful.”

She grins back at him and drags Jon outside the cellar and the door, following Dacey and Wylla. They go the opposite way, and Jon just stands there for a long moment before following her.

“If you’re worried about your mate there,” she whispers, steering him along, “I think he’s in good hands.”

“Is he?”

“Oh, if you think Robb can’t handle him, you know nothing.” If anything, she thinks she’s never met anyone more empathetic than Robb, which is also part of the reasons why she likes hanging out with him. “He can. I bet tomorrow he’s going to have a name at least.”

“I don’t know that,” Jon says. “The last time he – spoke, it was – long.”

“You mean, he hasn’t said a word in weeks?”

“Longer.”

Well, _damn_. “Don’t underestimate Robb. I think he’d get rocks to talk, if he set his mind to it.”

Jon doesn’t look too convinced, but he follows her quickly and silently, and Ygritte decides to drop the matter.

God, she’s going to hide what looks like a kid somewhat her age who’s been some kind of scientific experiment in her bloody bedroom.

If you had told her last week, she’d have laughed in your face.

\--

_“You can come out, they all left.”_

_It’s nothing he didn’t know – he heard them. He’s still not going to move. It’s really not that bad under here – it’s warm, and he hasn’t slept on a proper bed in years anyway, so it doesn’t make a great difference._

_“Fine.” Robb – he said his name was Robb – says and then –_

_He hears Robb lying down on the ground outside the bed. Blocking his only way out._

_He turns on his side at once and – no, Robb did leave some space in between himself and the bed. “I’m sure it’s not comfortable. Or well, if you want it the other mattress is there.”_

_He shakes his head. It’s not necessary. It’s really not. He can do without. It’s already enough that he ran into people who didn’t drag him straight back to the base._

_He shudders again at the thought – damn, if he just considers the option –_

_He’s not going to. But it’s too late – he already has, and now he’s shaking all over, and he’s not surprised when Robb stands up. He probably decided it wasn’t worth bothering. Good idea if you ask him, it’s not as if he’s much worth the effort at this point – not that he ever was, probably. Useless, he can’t help hearing again, even if he tried, he did –_

_He’s startled when Robb lies back down. He has a bundle of clothes nestled against his chest._

_“Listen, you’re wearing torn up scrubs. And you were bleeding. If you don’t want anyone to look at that, there’s a bathroom with a first aid kit and here are some clothes, but – I can’t really let you sleep there just like that.”_

_He stares back – how – why is he even still trying? He could understand if it was One, even if now from what he’s understood that’s not how they’re calling him, but –_

_“I’m not that kind of asshole, all right? And I’d feel horrible if you slept under my bed anyway. Come on, the door’s locked if that’s the problem.”_

_He almost gasps when Robb reaches out again and puts a hand in between them, palm up._

_Same as he did in the forest before. He swallows, he doesn’t know if he should do it, but – but –_

_He honestly can’t remember the last time anyone treated him like this. Well. One was an exception, but One had reasons, and anyway he knows that out in the world he’d just ruin the kid’s chances if he stuck around. He’s already made friends or what passes for it, he’ll be fine. Even with never having left the base, he’ll be fine. He knows that._

__Him_ , on the other hand –_

_“I can do this all night.” Robb doesn’t seem aware he’s interrupted his line of thought, and he’s still there and not moving and –_

_He doesn’t even know why he slowly rolls over so that he’s not under the bed anymore. He doesn’t take Robb’s hand again._

_“Well, good.” Robb sits up when he does, putting the clothes on the ground. “If you want to, uh, clean your cuts or something, the bathroom’s over there. Really, I don’t need to be there if you don’t want to –”_

_He glances at the room. It’s white and sterile and suddenly he knows he can’t walk on his own in there. He shakes his head._

_“Wait, you want me to come?”_

_He nods, even if he doesn’t know why – maybe he just wants to see how long it’s going to take before Robb realizes it’s wasted time._

_“Fine. Come on, you can go in before me. If you want a shower –”_

_He shakes his head again._

_“No? All right, no hurry. Right, sit down, I’ll try to be fast.” Robb grabs what looks like disinfectant and a small piece of gauze from the emergency kit, then he takes a look at him and at the torn pants in his scrubs. “Yeah, well, you’re going to have to wash your feet at least. Right. Sit over the tub.”_

_He opens the water, settling on warm – it’s not as if he couldn’t take it if it was scalding hot or freezing, but it’s not the point. When he closes the tap Robb moves back and tells him to just put his feet in there and wait it out. He does, relishing in how nice it feels, and meanwhile he lets Robb clean the cuts he had on his wrists and palms – when he arrives to the fairly nasty one in his arm, Robb says nothing and wraps some bandages around it. When he’s satisfied, he tosses him a towel. He dries his feet with shaking hands and throws the towel in the tub – Rob nods and then kneels down and starts disinfecting the cuts on his ankles._

_“You know,” he says, “it’s getting real weird to refer to you without anything to go by. Admittedly, I don’t think_ silent guy from the woods _is going to work for much longer.”_

_For a moment he almost wants to laugh and then bites down on the side of his tongue – if he does – no. No, he can’t._

_“What I mean, it’s not that I want your real name or anything – hell, your friend there decided he liked whatever Bran picked better, so, but some kind of name wouldn’t hurt.”_

_As if._ You’re asking me the hardest thing you could _, he doesn’t say._

_Robb doesn’t press when he doesn’t receive any answer. He wraps up the worst cuts, checks the rest of his legs and then nods before handing him back the clothes._

_“I’ll wait outside. I’m not closing the door,” he adds, and – right. It’s a compromise. He wouldn’t mind being naked, it doesn’t even matter, but – it’s nice that someone would assume that he doesn’t have any right to see it._

_He swallows and gets rid of his scrubs, and then since he would feel bad getting Robb’s clothes dirty when he’s being way nicer than he should, he steps carefully in the shower and washes quickly, avoiding to touch the bandages, and enough that he won’t ruin whatever he puts on. It’s underwear, soft pajama pants and a matched shirt with long sleeves – it’s warm, almost impossibly so, and when he walks out of the bathroom he feels – not different, not quite, but – somehow better?_

_“Well, you look way better already,” Robb says. “Anyway, please, there’s – you can use the mattress. Really. I’d feel bad if you slept on the ground.”_

_He shakes his head, and for once there’s something on the tip of his tongue suggesting that he actually _tells_ Robb there’s no reason._

_He hasn’t… thought about it in months. Or years. He just decided not to, just in case, because he wanted to keep his tongue and as long as Ramsay’s out there there’s always the chance he might –_

_A hand moves to his shoulder. “Hey.” Robb looks worried now. “You’re shaking too much. Cold? No?”_

_He shakes his head again. “I didn’t think so. Come on, just – lie down. Please. Really, it’s not a problem.”_

_Maybe it would be a good idea. Except that he’s standing there and he can’t bring himself to move, he doesn’t know why his hands seem to have locked at his sides, and then Robb swears under his breath._

_He must have seen the tattoo, then._

_It’s on his collarbone, not the arm like One. He doesn’t know why he has it there, but it’s not as if he ever asked._

_Robb probably was expecting just a number._

_There used to be a zero inked there, indeed, and there still is. Too bad that it’s not ink by now. Anyone would notice that someone carved over it with a knife._

_Robb looks at that, then at him, opens his mouth a few times and closes it, then he grabs the hem of the shirt he’s wearing and drags it forward so that it covers the tattoo._

_“I’m not calling you_ Zero _, by the way,” he says, in a very poor attempt to pretend it doesn’t matter, and the thing is – it’s obvious that he’s freaked out, but he still hasn’t called his parents or the police or has told him to just get away from him or something, which is – not what he expected. Not what he’d have expected from anyone but One, and that’s different._

 _“What –” Robb says then, looking downwards. “Oh my fucking – are_ you _doing this?”_

_Doing what? He’s done exactly nothing now, has –_

_Oh._

_Robb’s hand grips harder at his shoulder, and he would, because –_

_Because they’re floating above the ground._

_The cellar isn’t big but the ceiling is high, and now they’re about – if he reaches up with a hand, he could touch it. He looks down. The mattress is also floating, the table is too, even if not as much, a few of Robb’s books and a backpack are as well, and –_

_He nods once, minutely, and – it’s not that he didn’t know he could, but he hasn’t been able to do it in months. That’s why they closed his file and deemed him useless and kept him around because_ Ramsay liked him _and in case he was needed, he never quite figured out for what. Surely he’s never done it without thinking about it or concentrating before._

_And it always hurt before, now it – it doesn’t._

_“Christ.” Robb looks down again, then up at him. “I don’t know what the hell is going on but that’s – neat.”_

_He swallows, tries to at least put back down the mattress and the table and the likes – Robb hasn’t asked to let him go back on the ground, has he? The furniture lands back on the ground, he and Robb don’t._

_The grip on his shoulder gets slightly less strong._

_“Is it – is it really horrible if I say that this is… actually… cool?” Robb’s not quite looking at him. “I mean, I can guess that if you can do this it’s not for good reasons, but – wow.”_

_That’s when it hits him full-force – he said it before in the woods._ I’m turning eighteen next month _. He has no clue when he turned eighteen, though he most probably did, but something tells him that it’s just normal that you’d find it cool if someone made you fly at that age. Probably Robb’s brother would find it even... cooler, but that’s not the point, is it? The point is that when he had to do this at the base, it wasn’t because it was cool. It was because One was supposed to find the way to let the Others in and then he was supposed to be the one controlling them, and then they decided One could handle both, but that was it, and now Robb is looking genuinely awed and –_

_The books that had just landed on the ground shoot back up in the air again._

_He barely notices that they’re flying slowly around them._

_He doesn’t know what it means – surely he’s not controlling it, but he’s also not killing anyone while he’s at it. Which is good, because if Robb isn’t completely freaked out by now then he kind of wants him to keep on not being freaked out._

_Except that – people need names, don’t they? And Robb is going to need one for him, and honestly, Zero would have been fine because it’s not Reek and he couldn’t care less, but – but Robb deserves a better answer, _he_ thinks._

_He opens his mouth once, and nothing comes out of it. Robb does notice though, and instead of worrying about the books he turns all his attention on him._

_Robb gives him a nod, which was probably meant to be encouraging, even if he doesn’t even know what he was about to do._

_“You know,” Robb says a moment later, “I’m asking a whole damn lot of questions because I’ve been freaked since we started out looking for our friends and if I don’t talk I feel like this is going to catch up to me, but you don’t really have to answer any of them if you don’t want to.”_

_He’s not going to ask himself why that is what makes him actually want to._

_He parts his lips again. He clears his throat – he doesn’t even know what’s going to come out of it._

_But Robb wanted a name, didn’t he? It’s not really much to ask._

_And he had one before those people in a suit showed up on his front door and his father told him they were from that fancy school he told him he’d live at from then on._

_He’s tried to not think about it too much, because there was no point and it would have just made things worse –_

_“Theon,” he blurts out, and he hates the sound of his own voice – it’s barely audible and he sounds like someone who hasn’t used it in months, because he hasn’t, but then Robb’s eyes go slightly wider._

_“That’s – that’d be your name?” He sounds excited, for that matter._

_“It was,” he croaks again – maybe he should have drunk whatever it was the others were having before._

_“Yeah, well, definitely better than _Zero_. Nice to meet you then.”_

__How _is he taking it so well? He – he doesn’t know, but then Robb’s free hand moves in between them, and – oh._

_At this point, he might as well allow himself to do it. After all, he came as far as leaving the base._

_Even if they find him again, it was worth it, he thinks._

_Theon reaches down, shaking Robb’s hand as the books keep on spinning around them._

_“Nice –” He starts, then clears his throat, again. “Nice to meet you, too,” he manages, and he doesn’t match Robb’s answering grin because that’d be too much, but the constant dreadful feeling that’s been with him for years is suddenly not there anymore._

_Maybe escaping wasn’t such a suicidal notion, after all._


	3. you have to face the thing in the dark

“Let’s – let’s just go over it again. You want to get inside the base because you think _that_ place has something to do with my – my niece disappearing into thin air and you need me to do it?”

Brienne shrugs and holds Lannister’s stare – it’s obvious he hasn’t slept a wink so she’s not going to be an arsehole to him, especially when he has all the reasons to be skeptical, but she doesn’t think they have much time to lose.

“You said you were in the military at some point.”

“Yeah, worst decision of my entire fucking life.”

“Right, but – I tried to ask for a warrant and they wouldn’t give me one. Given that your family name still has some relevance –”

“Please, don’t remind me,” he groans.

“Well, I have to, because I need to get in there and no one else in here has any kind of tie with them. Listen, we found _pieces of hospital scrubs_ near that area. Those bikes were fairly close to the base. There was something wrong going on in there the evening they disappeared – at least, unless Wylla Manderly was making the electricity failure up, but I doubt it. Maybe it has nothing to do with your niece and Shireen, but there’s something going on in there and I don’t like it. And if I wait for a warrant, if they give it to me, I doubt they would even let me in.”

“ _Hospital scrubs_.”

“Some of them covered in blood. I doubt it’s directly tied to the disappearance, but – it’s still fishy. You were the one saying I was too competent for this town, weren’t you?”

“Yeah, I remember saying that.”

“Well, then trust me to be competent. I know you most probably want to lock yourself up in the living room and get drunk until you pass out, but your niece is still missing, not dead, we’re doing everything we can and I need to get into that base. Will you help me out or are you going to hide in here?”

For a moment it seems like his eyes turn a darker shade of green, and that he might go and tell her to fuck off already, but then – then he snorts and shrugs, running a hand through his hair. “You know what, you’re a bloody stubborn ass if you want to, but you’re right. Fine. Let me wash my face and change, I’ll be down in a bit.”

She nods and waits for him – he comes back with a clean shirt and changed jeans, and he still looks horrible but – well, presentable. She spares a moment for being slightly envious of his good looks in the face of his lack of sleep, and then buries it – she learned in elementary school that being envious of someone’s good looks when you can’t have them and never will is useless.

“We have the only car available,” she says. “Be our guest.”

“Seriously? You have just _one_?”

“For someplace this small, one is deemed more than enough. Come on, let’s see if this goes over decently.”

As if – there’s virtually no traffic when it comes to getting there, but of course the armed soldiers at the gate stop them. Which – well, that was expected.

“Sorry,” one of them says, “this is a restricted area.”

Brienne flashes her badge. “My name is Brienne Tarth, I am the local sergeant. You will have heard about those two girls disappearing –”

“This is still a restricted area, ma’am.” Well, at least he’s polite. “We cannot let you in if you don’t have a warrant.”

“We have reason to believe that they might have stumbled over on this side. I am sorry, but a warrant requires at least a few days, and in these cases – time is of the essence.”

“I still can’t let you in. I would need a superior to authorize me.”

Then Lannister shrugs, takes off his seatbelt and gets out of the car. “Then how about,” he drawls, and to anyone he would sound like he was trying to keep his tone pleasant, but she can hear that he’s not pleased at all, “you call your superior here and we can explain him what’s the matter? Oh, excuse me, I didn’t introduce myself, my name is Jaime Lannister, one of the disappeared kids is my niece, I happen to have almost lost a hand when in I was in your same army and there’s a few people I could call who would call your boss, because they owe me a couple favors, and I’m sure none of us is here to waste your time. So, _can you_?”

There’s one thing to be said – the guy almost salutes, and then he says he will call for General Bolton and if they can please wait here. Jaime huffs and sits back inside the car.

“Is that true?” Brienne asks.

“What?”

“That you know people who owe you.”

He shrugs. “In theory. Well, I have one friend who’s currently stationed somewhere in Japan, but he’s the kind of guy who would bluff if I asked him to. He owes me absolutely nothing, but they don’t need to know that. And don’t look at me as if I just did something horrid lying to that poor bastard, you are the one wanting to get in without a warrant.”

Which is an entirely good point, so she doesn’t contradict him. When they see their guy come back with someone else in tow they both get out of the car.

“General?” Brienne asks, extending her hand.

“That would be me.” The man replies, shaking it for a moment before letting it go. She takes a good look at him – he’s in his late fifties, an average build, perfectly shaved. Most of his hair – still somewhat dark – is still on his head, though cut short. The only thing about him that’s not average is that his eyes are a peculiar shade of pale gray, but for the rest he looks perfectly ordinary in his pristinely kept uniform. He’s also very guarded, his face not giving anything away except that he doesn’t look happy at all to be here. “Sergeant Tarth. No need to introduce yourself.” He even has a soft voice – you have to pay attention to hear it, since he doesn’t bother to raise it. That said, it sounded so condescending she has to fight the temptation to say something nasty in return – at that Lannister clears his throat and moves next to her.

“General,” he says, “ _a pleasure_. Jaime Lannister. Never quite made it that far, I stopped at major, but then again it wasn’t my career.”

“Yes,” Bolton says, shaking his hand as well. “I was told you also were here. And I am sorry to say, I cannot let you in.”

“General, I understand that it’s not proper procedure,” Lannister goes on, and Brienne decides to let him talk for the moment. “But the local police merely wants a sweep of the area just to make sure the girls didn’t get lost somewhere on your property and we all know how warrants go.”

“Well,” Bolton replies, “if we had found them, we’d have told you. I can assure you that nothing strange happened around here and we’re all going about our business. So, I have to regrettably inform you that we cannot let you in.”

“Nothing strange?” Brienne asks. “I imagine that your electricity not working for a good couple hours the night they disappeared isn’t something out of the ordinary?”

She probably shouldn’t have said it, but then there’s a split moment when Bolton’s carefully blank expression turns worried before going back to its previous state.

“Sometimes,” he replies, slowly, “sometimes that regrettably happens. Do not worry, we are not housing hidden nuclear bombs that might blow should the electricity generator have a temporary failure.”

“I imagine there’s quite nothing we can do unless we show up with a warrant,” Brienne sighs.

“Sorry to say, but it’s a question of protocol. Miss Tarth, I wish you all the best in your investigation. Mr. Lannister, I imagine I should send your father your regards when we see each other next?”

Right. Because Tywin Lannister owns a weapons manufacturing empire. He would meet up regularly with the army, Brienne thinks.

Lannister is looking at Bolton as if he’d like to say something very nasty, but then gives him a frankly terrifying smirk instead. “No, but you can tell him _go fuck yourself_ in those exact terms. Have a good day, General.”

He goes back in the car, slamming the door. Brienne holds Bolton’s stare for another long moment, then shakes her head and does the same. Bolton keeps his expressionless façade at least until she has pulled out of the path driving in reverse.

“Well, you were right on one thing,” Lannister says as she drives away, “there’s something rotten going on there. If they had nothing to hide he wouldn’t have insisted that much. Fuck him.”

“What was that about your father?”

“He just wants to let me know that if I try to play that card, he’s plenty aware that we hate each other. Sorry that my connections didn’t let you in, but at this point I’ll try to give Arthur a call, maybe he can do something about it. I doubt it though.”

He’s just said that when she hears thunder cracking in the distance, and a moment later it starts raining all over again. She slows down.

“Listen, where do I drop you off?”

He sighs. “Tommen was sleeping at Bran Stark’s and today they took the day off school, so – no, I’ll just go get him later. I’ll go to the station with you, maybe your boss has some news. Or something.”

Brienne shrugs and heads for the main road into town, and then her service walkie-talkie beeps. She grabs it.

“Insp – Davos? Did anything happen?”

“Are you out still?”

“Uh, yes. I went with Lannister to check the base, but they wouldn’t let us in. I think something’s –”

“We can discuss that later. We just got an anonymous call saying that someone killed Dontos Hollard in his restaurant – I’m about to head there, but if you have the car please go check the scene before anyone tries to go in to get bloody breakfast.”

“What? Hollard? _Killed_?”

“I know. Who even killed someone here in the last fifteen years? Anyway, I’ll see you there.”

She turns and looks at Lannister. “I can still drop you off at the station –”

“Never mind. I’m walking. Let me know if anything comes up.”

He gets out of the car and slams the door behind him. Brienne shrugs and drives ahead – no point in telling him to not take it out on the only functioning car the police have at their disposal.

Now, as far as she knows Dontos had no relatives, was fairly happy running his mediocre restaurant and was a bit of a pushover, but – why, why would anyone kill him?

The longer this story goes on the less things add up and she’s not liking it one bit.

\--

“Sansa, I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Mum isn’t going to let me go otherwise,” Sansa says, and – it sounds almost pleading, which if you ask Jeyne is just all kinds of weird. They’ve known each other for years, she shouldn’t sound like that. She sighs, closing her book – revising math can wait.

“Listen,” she says, “if _Margaery_ really doesn’t mind me showing up uninvited I guess I can come, but really, that’s – that’s just not my scene.”

“Oh, of course she won’t! I already asked her, she said it’s not a problem, and well, it wasn’t my scene up until now either, right? What do we have to lose? Come on, I’m sure it’s going to be great. Please?”

Jeyne breathes in and out, wondering if she shouldn’t just say no – it’s not just that she doesn’t particularly want to go, it’s that with Myrcella and Shireen Baratheon disappearing into thin air she’s not that excited at the idea of going off in the woods, given that Margaery lives next to the freeway in this two-storey house with a pool, a parking spot and everything that comes with that kind of building and they should walk there. To be honest, she doesn’t get why Margaery hasn’t postponed it given the situation, but – that’s not the point, is it?

Sansa looks so excited about it, she can’t bring herself to say no. Especially when Sansa has been planning her outfit for it for the entire last week.

“As long as we leave together not too late,” she finally agrees.

“You’re the _best_ ,” Sansa says, and she sounds so excited it’s almost contagious. “I’m coming over to your place later then – we can dress up and get ready before we go. I’m sure it’ll be amazing.” She also looks like she could talk about it a while longer, but their Math teacher comes in a moment later and she turns back to her books.

As if. Jeyne has no illusions about it being _amazing_ – maybe for Sansa. Surely not for her. She’s not as pretty, her grades aren’t as good and she’s just perfectly average, and she’s sure that there isn’t one single person in Margaery Tyrell’s popular crowd who wants to hang out with _her_. She’ll probably spend the evening drinking Coke on the side and trying to not get noticed.

Then again – well, Sansa used to talk about how, when they went to high school, they’d get to go out and put on makeup and play games on Saturday night with all the new friends they’d be making, and they might have spent a few afternoons (right, more than a few) fantasizing about the nice boyfriends they would hold hands with.

Then, nothing of that happened – with Jeyne, because she really has never been popular material, and Sansa could have been but since all three of her siblings in the school system are not, she never quite made the leap either. And now that Margaery has invited her after they were partnered together for some science project she’s looking like she’s over the moon about it.

Well, Jeyne will go because she’s Sansa’s friend and she wants her to be happy, but she really hopes that it doesn’t mean that they’ll eventually stop seeing each other.

Maybe she’s watched too many movies. In real life, people don’t just dump their friends when they find _more popular ones_. Surely it won’t happen with them.

Will it?

\--

Ygritte’s alarm goes off at nine AM – she figured that there was no sense in waking up at the crack of dawn if they weren’t going to school and she had to sneak to Robb’s later. She groans and shuts it off, sitting up on the bed – damn, yesterday’s small trip was exhausting. She should probably drag herself out of bed, check on her guest and go grab some breakfast in the kitchen, good thing she’s alone in the house. She opens her eyes again, goes to get off the bed, her feet touching the ground –

And then a tray floats in front of her.

A tray with a yogurt, a glass of orange juice, an apple and a spoon.

_Floating_.

In front of her.

Trays _don’t float_ , not in her experience.

She looks up at the other side of the room, the one where the extra bed is.

_Jon_ is sitting cross-legged over it, looking impossibly small in that oversized sweater, and he’s looking at her with the face of someone who’s hoping they didn’t fuck it up.

So he’s making it float.

She’s starting to understand a lot of things.

She could freak out right now.

Or, she could get over it _before_ freaking out and skip that part completely, never mind that if he went downstairs to check the kitchen and he put it up to pay her a favor it’s actually sweet – it’s obvious it was put together by someone who went on a wild guess of what people eat for breakfast, and she’s not going to be the arsehole who tells the kid that he’s fucked up.

She reaches out and grabs the tray, putting it on her legs.

“Neat,” she says, grabbing the apple. “You know you can go get some too, yes?”

“Can I?”

She takes a bite of the apple and doesn’t bother swallowing before giving him an answer. “Sure. If I have guests they usually get food, too. Also, you look like you’re famished. Go ahead.”

The door opens. Two minutes later, another yogurt, along with a spoon, flies gently over to where Jon is sitting, right into his hand.

Ygritte really needs to ask Robb if Jon’s mate, or whoever he is to him, can do the same stuff. She will later, she supposes.

“Hey,” she says, “you mind if – I mean, can I ask you some questions?”

He nods as he opens up the yogurt cup. The trashcan flies towards his bed so he can throw the cover inside it.

“Uh, when you and your mate over at Robb’s ran, were you looking for… I don’t know, your family? His family?”

Jon shakes his head. “He never said. I – always lived there.”

“You _always lived there_.”

“Sir said my mother didn’t want me,” he replies quietly, matter-of-fact.

“ _Sir_ being – the guy in charge?”

Jon nods, then looks up at her with those familiar grey eyes. Honestly, why do they remind her of something that she can’t quite place? “Can I ask you something?”

“’Course.”

“You – you’re saying that me and – him are… mates?”

“You and unnamed guy over at Robb’s?”

“Yes. What – what does it mean?”

Ygritte thinks that whoever this Sir is, she’d quite like a minute or two with him.

“That you’re _mates_? Uh. Means you’re friends.”

The blank stare she gets in return says all – fuck all. The kid in front of him is branded like cattle, has no idea of what it means to have _friends_ at the ripe age of at least fifteen if she places him right, and has never set foot outside that base until yesterday, and on top of that he can move things with his mind.

She’s never felt more like a drink this early in the morning.

“Okay, uh, you saw us yesterday. Robb and Bran, they’re brothers. Like. They’re related. Same family. Would most probably die for each other and the likes. Bran and the other kids? Not related, but they love each other anyway. They’re – friends. Same as Robb, Dacey and I. It’s – oh, fuck’s sake.” She grabs the walkie-talkie she hadn’t given back to Tommen yesterday – she will in a moment – and presses the call button.

“Yeah?” Robb replies from the other side.

“Hey. Listen, is everyone else over there?”

“Yes, Dacey and Wylla got here ten minutes ago. We’re all in the basement.”

“Right. Listen, we’re coming in a bit, but – guys, please say in your own words what it means to be friends with someone.”

“ _What_?”

“Robb, just do it. I’ll explain you.”

She can hear him muttering, but then someone else takes the walkie-talkie from him – right. Wylla.

“The people you lend your comic books to,” she declares.

“Oh come on –” That was Bran. “It’s people you wouldn’t lie to and you’d – well, do anything for. I guess. Mostly. Okay, you also lend them comic books but that’s because you trust them.”

“And you don’t lie to your friends.” That was Tommen. “And – well, your relatives can be your friends, but like, you don’t choose your relatives.”

Dacey is snorting in the background, Ygritte can vaguely hear it. Robb takes the walkie-talking again a moment later. “Yeah, good point, you choose your friends, I guess, and you’ll stick with them even if a lot of times you regret ever thinking introducing yourself was a good idea, since they’ll _steal all your Cok_ e. Dacey, that’s the last pack I have, come on. Anyway, we’re waiting. Bring a raincoat, it’s going to rain.”

“I noticed,” she says. “And listen, how is Jon’s _mate_ doing?”

“Wait.”

For a moment she hears static, and then –

“Sorry, I had to go out. I didn’t think everyone else should hear it. Is Jon listening?”

“Yeah, he is.”

“Right. Uh, we were in the living room, he’s currently still sleeping it off in the basement. I managed to get a name out of him yesterday.”

Jon’s eyes go wide in a way that would be almost endearing, if Ygritte wasn’t thinking _they’ve known each other fuck knows how long and he’s surprised about that_.

“I also managed to get a few other things out of him, but. Well. We just said friends don’t break each other’s trust and I don’t think it’s my place to tell others. Anyway, he did that while _we were both floating above the ground_ and half of the furniture in my basement was doing the same – does that sound familiar?”

She looks up at Jon, who looks like someone completely floored – he has the spoonful of yogurt halfway to his mouth but isn’t eating it.

“It does,” she says. “Our other friend here can do that, too, except – well, he can pick and choose what to lift. I think.”

“Right. Listen, just try to get here as soon as you can, then we’ll just – decide what to do in the long run. Long-ish run, I guess. We’re waiting.”

She puts the walkie-talkie in the backpack she had left near the bed. Jon finally eats the yogurt, but he still looks like he hadn’t expected anything he just heard.

“Something wrong?” Ygritte asks, standing up and grabbing her clothes from yesterday – she can have a shower later. Right now they need to go and figure shit out for real. “By the way, did that answer your question? About whether you and him are mates.”

Jon shrugs. “I guess we are, if it’s like that. Sort of.” He speaks slowly, as if he’s carefully picking every other word he says. “But – your friend, he said, he said _he_ made them fly?”

“Like you did with my breakfast? Yeah, he said that. Why?”

Jon shakes his head. “He – Sir, he said – he said that – my _mate_ , he was faulty.”

“Faulty.” Like some kind of fucking machine. Ygritte needs a drink or ten.

“I – I can control that,” he says. “I can – do other things. It’s complicated. He – he should have, too. But – he couldn’t do that anymore. For a long time. That’s why they said he was faulty. When he could do something, he couldn’t control it anymore. And your friend – he’s alive?”

“We just talked to him.” Ygritte shrugs. “Shouldn’t he be?”

Jon shrugs as well. “It’s complicated.”

_I can guess that_. Ygritte sighs. “Everything in the world is fucking complicated. Come on, finish that yogurt and grab a raincoat. This is going to be a long day.”

Jon goes back to the yogurt at once and she puts on her shirt, not even caring that he might see her with just her bra on – he’s not even glancing her way.

Any fifteen year-old with a functioning libido who also wasn’t your _friend_ would probably do it, she thinks to herself.

And _he_ is the well-adjusted one out of their duo.

There’s a reason why Han Solo was perfectly right when he said that he had _a bad feeling about this_.

\--

It’s not that Stannis hopes for any _good_ news when he heads out to the police station in his coffee break. The city hall is right next to it, so he can take the time, and he never even has coffee anyway, never mind that he could barely manage to do the job since –

He could, and he has, but his head isn’t really in it. He wants to believe that since they found nothing then Shireen is still alive and that Myrcella is as well, but he’s not – not an idiot. He knows how it goes in these cases. He knows that if you don’t find someone who’s disappeared into thin air before twenty-four hours the chances become lower, and after forty-eight they get _worse_.

Damn it to hell and back, a girl whose dream was _going to Oxford and then teaching English in public schools because she was sad that her classmates didn’t like to read_ can’t just have –

He’s not going to think that she’s dead. Because that would be unfair, and she didn’t do a thing to deserve it, and there’s no proof that she’s dead. Or that Myrcella is.

_Well, as long as there isn’t a body_ , a traitorous voice in his head says.

He silences it and walks into the station.

He had expected Davos to be there, or Brienne Tarth, but instead there’s just Alysane Mormont, looking over reports.

“Oh, Mr. Baratheon,” she says. “I imagine you would like news?”

“If you have them. But – shouldn’t _someone_ be here?”

Alysane takes a drag off the cigarette she had in her mouth when he came in. “In theory. But there was an emergency.”

For a moment he hopes it’s _about_ –

“Apparently, someone shot Dontos Hollard in the head yesterday.”

“ _What_?”

“We received a call earlier this morning, anonymous tip. Brienne had the car, she had some kind of hunch about your daughter’s case but she wouldn’t tell anyone else, so she went straight there. The Inspector left the moment he heard and called back a while ago – it was legit. Don’t ask me if it might have anything to do with your daughter – I’m the secretary.”

“That’s – that’s quite all right. Thank you very much regardless. Please – tell them I dropped by when they come back?”

“Got it covered.” She takes another drag from the cigarette, and then the lightbulb in the lamp next to her starts flickering. She had it turned on because it’s raining outside, most probably. “What the fuck,” she says, turning it off. The light flickers another couple of times, and then it dies. “That was odd,” Alysane finally says. “Guess I’ll change it. Have a good day, as much as you can.”

He appreciates the honesty, at least. He sighs, opens his umbrella and leaves the station, heading back for his office. It’s raining harder now, and he doesn’t let himself think about how it also means that if there were any traces left where Shireen and Myrcella disappeared, it’ll wash them away for good.

There isn’t a body yet. Or two. Just wait. Be patient. This is a small town. There is literally nothing dangerous around here. They probably got lost in some cave in the woods . They will find them.

They will.

Right, except that who would even shoot Dontos Hollard in the head, out of everyone? As far as Stannis knows, the guy had no friends but no enemies either and he’s been living here since forever.

He would really, really like to know what the hell is going on.

He doesn’t notice that when he walks past the streetlight in front of the city hall, the bulb’s light starts flickering once, twice, before it dies for good.

\--

“Should I go get – him?”

One – no, _Jon_ , he likes it a lot better, immediately knows who the _him_ Robb is talking about is.

He also has noticed that Robb was about to say the name and then didn’t. He can imagine why he wouldn’t, and at the same time he can’t help wondering what has happened yesterday that might have changed the situation. Jon never knew his name even if he had been around the base since forever. He knows Sir’s son called him _Reek_ , but that’s not – Jon doesn’t know a lot of things, he figures (he didn’t know what it means to be someone’s mate, even if looking at everyone else in the living room he can see it now), but he has always known that it wasn’t a _real_ one.

Apparently, _One_ isn’t a real name either. That makes sense, though. They always told him there never had been a _two_ because he was enough and he should feel good about it, because he was the key to a lot of things they never quite described to him in clear words.

He knows it was a lie. He’s plenty aware of that. He knows he’s not the kind of key _he_ himself would open any doors with.

Still, he could open those doors. If he wanted.

However. He never quite needed a name for his mate, since it always was just the two of them in that little room. You don’t need names when it’s like that.

When the other person doesn’t talk, even less. He used to, a while ago. Then one day he was brought out and he came back with bloodied scrubs and he hasn’t said a word since.

He doesn’t know how it makes him feel to know that someone they barely even know got him to talk in the span of mere hours, but – Ygritte did tell him that Robb could make stones talk if he wanted, and she was probably exaggerating but she doesn’t look like someone who’d have lied, and she’s _nice_ , and –

“Please,” he says. Sir always told him he should be _polite_.

Or else.

“No need for that,” Robb says, sending him a searching look that One – no, _Jon_ – doesn’t make much of. Of course they would stare. He might have never left that base, but he knows that making things fly and what they can do is strange, to normal people.

He has wished he was a _normal person_ a lot of times.

“I’ll go get him. Leave me at least one Coke, though?”

“Hurry up if you want it!”

That was Robb’s brother – Robb smacks him lightly on the back before heading for the basement.

It’s all so – strange. The way they interact so casually. They never did back at the base – casual touching was heavily discouraged. They did it anyway, sometimes, in spite of it, but still, he can’t imagine anyone having ever treated him like that.

“Hey,” the girl, Wylla, says as she moves in front of him. “Ygritte said you can make stuff fly. Is that real?”

“Uh, yes,” he replies.

“Oh, _cool_.” She sounds like she really thinks it’s… cool.

Jon doesn’t think it is, not from what he understands that word means, but –

“Do you – want to try?” He asks.

“What?”

He leans back and concentrates for a moment – she’s fairly small and anyway it wouldn’t be that much of a distance. Her seat is just on the other side of the table.

“Oh my _God_ ,” she breathes as she suddenly is lifted into thin air and he moves her back until she’s sitting on the chair she was on before.

It took him maybe five seconds, but the moment he lets her go the entire room (Ygritte excluded – she’s just looking at the scene with a small grin on her face) erupts in shouts of _cool, that was amazing, can you do that again, seriously_ , and then –

“I can’t believe it,” Bran says, “you’re just like a real life wizard!”

“… Sorry?”

“Oh my god, you can _levitate_ people, that’s amazing, I –”

“Bran, take pity on him,” Ygritte says. Jon feels mildly thankful, because _what_ is that?

“It’s a game,” Dacey explains him as he hands over a can of that delicious drink he had yesterday evening. “You pretend to be a warrior or a wizard in another world, like, it’s all made-up, and there’s a spell that makes you lift people in the air like that. Bran is a nerd and likes spells,” she adds, “but like, it’s a game. He was just saying that you’re like one of the characters.”

Jon wants to ask them what they mean with _characters in a game_ , the concept isn’t exactly clear, but he has a feeling is one of those questions that would make them look his way as if they’re taking pity on him, for which they probably have reasons, but – he’d rather not.

He’s about to tell Bran that he can lift him up as well if he wants to, it’s no effort at all, and then Robb comes back and the noise dies down. “Jon?”

“Yes?”

“He – he wants to talk to you alone before everyone else. Or – well, can you come down a moment?”

He nods and stands up, and he doesn’t want to know why it’s so _nice_ to answer to a name that’s not One – he’ll think about it later.

He leaves everyone else behind and walks down the stairs, behind Robb.

“Hey, can I ask you a question?” Robb says as they go down.

“Of – of course.”

“Just out of curiosity – do you know how old you are?”

Jon shakes his head. “Not – not really. I always was there. Should I know?”

“Didn’t you have – birthdays or anything?”

_What_?

“… Birthdays?”

“Never mind. I’ll – I’ll explain later. Come on, get in.”

He opens the door and Jon walks inside and – right. There he is. Sitting on the spare mattress, which is better than under the bed, Jon figures, not quite looking at him and staring down at his hands, but at least he looks – better than he had in the base. Or just outside it.

Robb looks at the both of them, then heads back for the door.

“Right. Take all the time you need. We’re going to be upstairs.”

Robb leaves and closes the door, not locking it. Jon swallows and cautiously sits down on the mattress, not close enough to touch. He clears his throat. He wishes he knew what to say. _I’m sorry they said you were faulty and left you to rot because they had me anyway? Why did you leave me in the woods?_ No, he thinks he knows why that happened. _What happened yesterday evening? Will you talk to me? Look at it, seems like we have friends now?_

“Thank you,” he says instead.

A moment later, he has dark eyes locked with his own. _He_ shakes his head, but Jon thinks he needs to make a point. “No. Thank you. I could not – I couldn’t have done it if you hadn’t started it. And I didn’t want to stay. If I had –” He shakes his head. “I opened that door,” he whispers. “And I will have to close it. I know that. But I didn’t want to. And if we stayed it would have been worse. And – I know why you left in the woods. You thought I’d have better chances without you, didn’t you?”

Jon gets a nod in response, even if he looks kind of ashamed of it. And then –

“I’m _faulty_ , am I not?”

Jon doesn’t know if he should be glad that he heard _him_ talk or if he should hate that it’s the first thing the other boy has told Jon in years.

One of the people upstairs would have the right answer, Jon thinks. They all seem to have answers for all these things he can’t even name.

“ _They_ said you were. I never did,” he finally says. “And – Robb said – that you –”

“I don’t _know_ how.”

“But – he’s alive.” Jon remembers what happened the last time they forced _him_ to try and _levitate_ people. That was when Sir _retired_ him, as he used to say.

_He’s useless. And faulty. If Ramsay hadn’t found some use for him – never mind. Because you, One, are not._

“And nothing’s broken,” he says, glancing around the room.

“No. But – I don’t _know_ ”

“Well, according to _them_ , it’s… cool.”

“They’re insane. I’m – sorry I left you, but –”

“You’re not faulty.”

Sometimes, he thinks that maybe it would have been better if Jon himself had been... faulty. Maybe he wouldn’t have got things so _wrong_. Even if – he wants to hope that he just thought the situation was worse than it actually is. He’s going to wait and see.

Jon really hopes that the last time he went down to the lab he hasn’t unleashed what he thinks he did.

“So – so you’re not One anymore?” _He_ sounds like gravel as he obviously changes the topic, but then again he hasn’t spoken in so long, Jon doesn’t think it’s that strange. Also, the moment he hears his old name, he wants to recoil.

“No,” he replies. “No, I think – I like the new one better. And – Robb said – you told him yours?”

He gets a nod. Then he decides he might as well go through with it.

They’ve known each other since he can remember, and just now –

“I’m Jon now,” he says, and he doesn’t know how to name how it feels to actually say it out loud.

“I – I used to – Theon. _That_ was my name,” he replies quietly, not quite looking at him.

They’ve known each other for Jon’s entire life, and they exchanged names just _now._

But at least he has one now, right?

“Theon. It’s – nice. Thank you again.”

“Don’t.”

“I don’t think so. And – we should go upstairs now.”

“You go. I – will be there.”

“No, I think we should go together.”

Theon gives him a look. Then he nods and stands up, dusting off his shirt. For a moment he sways, and a book that had been flying around the room drops back down on the table. Jon hadn’t even noticed it was happening. Neither had _Theon_ , from the way he’s looking at it.

He turns his back on Jon and goes up the stairs. Jon follows, and the chatter goes down the moment they walk out of the stairs.

For a moment, there’s staring on both sides, and then Robb comes towards them – Jon is starting to think that he has to be like that lab technician who always managed to make everyone stop arguing around him and slipped him chocolate when no one was watching until he disappeared into thin air a few years ago. He doesn’t say that out loud.

“Right, I see you’re done, you can come ahead. My parents’ sofa isn’t going to bite you. Just sit wherever you want. Also –” He turns towards Theon. “They’re wondering how to call you, but I’m not going to say –”

Theon looks up at everyone else, blurts the name out, says something else no one quite understands and goes to sit in the empty chair next to the only free place on the sofa. Probably Robb’s. Robb heads there, Jon goes back sitting next to Ygritte and tries to not stare her way even if he kind of likes looking at her, if only because while she’s not trying to hide what she thinks about his upbringing, she’s taking it fairly in stride.

“So,” Dacey says, “about _why_ we were out when we found you.”

She starts talking, and that’s when Jon hopes that he’s not showing on his face the dread rising through him right now.

Two other girls _disappearing_ into thin air on that night?

Oh, no.

No, no, _no_.

He thought he hadn’t opened the door for good. Or better, he thought he closed it after peeking.

But if what they say is true, and he has no reason to doubt them –

Then he didn’t.

\--

“So you’re saying that they didn’t let you in?”

Brienne shakes her head and Davos takes out his notebook and writes that down. By now they’ve checked every other corner of the restaurant and they could only tell the coroner to take the body and bring it to the morgue, there really was nothing else to do. They spent the entire morning looking for fingerprints, but there are none on the door and it was useless to do it inside the diner – a bunch of people pass through here daily and if Dontos died last night, as it seems anyway, then the diner is full of fingerprints of all the clients who came by this afternoon. No bloody way they can have them all checked in a short time.

“No. There were armed guards outside, they called a general down, I guess he was the highest-ranking? His name was Bolton.”

“Yeah, _General Bolton_. Not the kind of guy I’d invite over for dinner. He’s been here since that base was established. It was what, twenty-five years ago?”

“Well, Lannister tried to play the _I have a powerful friend or ten in the army_ card but he didn’t buy it and shut the door in our face, so to speak.”

“So they’re hiding something.”

“Definitely.”

Davos looks at the blood stain on the floor as the rain keeps on pounding harder on the windows – well, there’s nothing they can do here. Sallador took pictures and he’s gone to develop them, Payne is waiting for them in the car and this looks completely unrelated to the girls’ disappearance, but still –

_Still_.

“Right. Let’s go back. We can hash it out in the car.”

He locks the door while Brienne pulls the obligatory crime scene tape over it, not that anyone with some sense would try to come in but who even knows, and then they run towards the car – shit, now he’s also drenched.

Brienne gets behind the wheel and starts driving out.

“So,” Davos says, “the two girls disappear into thin air two days ago at the same time the base’s electricity goes out for long enough that Wylla Manderly can get back home from her game night and notices it. Someone shoots Hollard in the head point blank the next evening, there’s traces of someone running out of the back door and of another three or four people coming inside the restaurant _after_ he died.”

“Yes,” Brienne says, “and the footprints running out – Davos, I think they were too small for being an adult. But – they also weren’t small enough for being either of the girls. And there’s the scrubs.”

“Right. So, the next morning Bolton doesn’t let either you or Lannister in even if he’d have nothing to lose if he did and we get an anonymous tip about Hollard, but I imagine that might just have been someone who came in for coffee and didn’t want to get involved. Meanwhile there’s _pieces of scrubs_ of different colors scattered through the woods. And some kid who is _not_ Shireen or Myrcella might have run out of Dontos’s restaurant, except that last I heard _he_ didn’t have children. And this went down in less than three days when since I made Inspector the worst thing I had to deal with has been fucking Baelish underpaying the people who work for him. If I say this is downright not normal I’m just stating the obvious.”

“Do you think it’s connected?” Brienne asks.

“What do you think?”

“That it would be strange if at least _some_ wasn’t,” she says.

“Uh, Sergeant, Inspector,” Payne says from the backseat. “I think we have a problem though.”

“I think I know what it is,” Davos sighs. “Go ahead. Someone has to say it.”

“I also think it has to be tied together, but uh, there’s – really no evidence, is there? And it’s – four of us.”

Yeah. That is exactly what he had been worried about. They can’t prioritize one thing over the other, not when one is a bona fide _murder_ , and they’re stretched thin as it is.

“Right. That’s also a point. Brienne, you already started digging around the military, and I think that has to be tied to Shireen and Myrcella – you can take that and I’ll take the murder. Payne, you’re with her unless you’d rather waste your time going over Dontos’s list of calls that I’m sure the phone company won’t give us before tomorrow.”

“No, uh, I can go with the Sergeant. I mean. If she’s fine with it.”

“Pod, I am fine with it. Never mind that I think Lannister is itching to help me out there, I’ll find _something_ out.”

“You know that we shouldn’t involve civilians, don’t you?”

“I haven’t seen you stopping me, have I?”

Davos really likes her – damn, he’s glad that _she_ is here for this investigation and not her predecessor, even if she’s still wasted in this town. Osmund Kettleback was plenty terrible at police work all around, and sure as hell he’d have never accomplished anything.

“If we all stuck to protocol we’d never get anywhere,” he admits. “Payne, you never heard me say that.”

“You said _what_ , sir?”

“Quit with the _sir_ , it makes me feel older than I actually fucking am. The moment we’re back I’m on those calls, hopefully something comes out of it. Brienne, try to not piss off the powers that be too much before you have actual proof of anything and don’t get Lannister killed. I don’t know if putting together another search party is a bad idea or not, but I’m just going to let you decide, it’s yours for the moment.”

“Right. Thank you, I’ll – I’m going to do everything I can.”

“I don’t doubt that. Well, at least I’m not going to waste you on fines anymore,” he sighs as she drives forward and parks in front of the station.Inside, Alysane tells him that Stannis dropped by in the morning – damn, Davos doesn’t want to be the one telling him that from now on his daughter’s case is going to have to be handled by half of their already small numbers.

“I’ll – I’ll drop by his place later,” Davos decides. “Listen, I need a list of the numbers Dontos Hollard called yesterday from the restaurant, if he did – can you handle that?”

“Boss, who do you think I am? I’m on it.”

Good. Now he’s going to have to call everyone living nearby to ask if they’ve seen anything weird – he’s never going to track down everyone who went to eat at the diner in the first place.

The moment he sits down in his chair, the rain turns into hail.

It’s only almost November and it’s hailing already?

He spares a thought for needing to buy a new coat, the one he has right now is too worn-out, and then the phone rings.

“Inspector Seaworth, how can I help you?”

“Boss?” That’s Sallador. He doesn’t sound like someone about to deliver bad news.

“What’s wrong?”

“You need to come to the lake immediately. Seems like we got a body.”

\--

There’s no one in when Stannis gets back home – he had imagined as much. Gendry said he would go distribute more flyers around, and while Stannis doubts it’s going to make a difference in the long run, he has no heart to tell him not to.

On top of that, Stannis hasn’t put in overtime today either, and he knows he’ll regret it when his paycheck comes next but he can barely concentrate on his regular work without taking on more.

He puts away his briefcase, takes off his tie, same as always, puts away his jacket and heads for the kitchen. He’s going to make dinner, same as always, and then he’s going to maybe call Davos just to be sure, and then he’s going to call Lannister because that’s just the decent thing to do and it’s two of them in this mess. Then he’s going to have to call Selyse because she deserves to know even if she most probably will not care, and by then maybe he will be tired enough to grab a few sleeping pills because otherwise he won’t be able to rest any.

It’s a reasonable plan, isn’t it?

He opens the fridge, which is half-empty because of course no one has bought groceries since, and he’s staring at a carton of eggs with the intent of taking it out since it’s about the one thing he can possibly make for dinner. He reaches out for it and then his hand stops midway – he wants to go ahead as always, but –

“Shireen, _what happened_ ,” he whispers, and then –

Then the fridge’s light goes out for a moment.

Then it flickers on again.

Then it goes out a second time.

Stannis looks at the plug next to it – no, it’s not placed wrong.

And – the light broke a couple of months ago and they had to call a repairman to fix it. There’s no way it’s malfunctioning again.

“… Shireen?” He asks, again, and he doesn’t even know why he’s doing it –

Nothing happens for a few moments. Then the light shuts off again for what seems like five seconds or so. Then it goes away for a split second, then comes back on but for a little less time, and then –

Five seconds. It turns off. Another five seconds. It turns off for a longer time. Three seconds. Then it turns off again. And then –

Three seconds, off, three seconds, off, three seconds.

_What is this_ , Stannis thinks.

It can’t be a malfunction. He has never heard of such a _malfunction_. It looked like it was a pattern.

The light is still on. It’s not flickering at all anymore.

Wait. A pattern?

Stannis slams the fridge’s door closed, and reaches for the notebook they keep in the kitchen to write down grocery lists and such. His hand is minutely shaking as he grabs the pen.

It was all long and short intervals of light.

With pauses.

If it didn’t sound insane it would have been somewhat like –

Somewhat like Morse code. Wouldn’t it?

He tries to remember the order. What was that?

One long burst of light, one short, two long ones. Then, just a short one. Then, another three short ones.

He wants to think he’s going insane.

But fact is –

_He_ had taught his daughter Morse code when she was eight and engrossed in some book about secret code communications during World War Two. He knows it well enough to recognize the word in front of him.

His hand is shaking wildly as he writes the letters under the symbols.

_YES._

He lets the pen fall, and then he’s about to head for the fridge when the phone rings.

“Yes?” he asks, picking up the receiver.

“Stannis?” That’s Davos. He sounds – he sounds like someone with bad news. And as if he’s calling from a phone cabin. “They found a body at the bottom of the lake. They want you to come in for the identification.”

“ _What_?”

“It’s – it’s Shireen. Or so it seems. Just hers.”

_No_ , he wants to say. It can’t be. Because if she’s dead then what did just happen?

And mostly, if two of them disappeared why has just one body been found?

“I will be at the morgue,” he says instead, hoping that he sounds as calm as he’s trying to project.

“Shireen?” He asks again, staring up at the lamp in the kitchen.

Nothing happens, but –

But if they found a body…

_What did just happen?_

\--

Of course it’s> hailing.

Of course it means that they all have to stay inside Margaery’s house, which means that it’s crowded and obviously when they came in, Margaery went and introduced Sansa to all her friends and completely ignored Jeyne, who has been... pretty much standing like an idiot and pretending to drink from the same Coke bottle for an hour so that she has something to do with her hands.

Admittedly, Sansa has tried to bring her into a few conversations and a spin the bottle game that she left after twenty minutes of not getting any action whatsoever. And she doesn’t want to ruin Sansa’s evening by being the person who is obviously wishing she were somewhere else.

Someone tries to grope her, she pushes them away. Someone else who’s definitely in the same class as Margaery, and whose name Jeyne doesn’t recall, asks her what is she doing here, she says she’s with a friend, they laugh and leave her there with her lukewarm Coke.

She really hopes she won’t cry out of frustration just because it would ruin the make-up she painstakingly applied before Sansa arrived, because she wanted to at least pretend that she was taking this as seriously as Sansa is.

Yeah, and they haven’t exchanged a word since the spin the bottle game.

Maybe she should just come to terms with the fact that she might in fact end up replaced by the new cooler people like in those dumb movies. And now people are talking about sleeping over and damn, no, her father was very clear on not wanting her to sleep somewhere else. Which she can understand, given what happened to –

She shakes her head and drinks some of the Coke for real. Never mind that there are at least fifty people at this party. No way this house can host more than thirty, regardless of whether Marg’s parents are here or not.

She’s about to ask Sansa when is she planning to head home, hopefully the game is over, and that’s when Sansa stumbles out of the living room – she looks radiant, laughing about something with one of Margaery’s friends, and then she sees her and waves her over.

“Hey,” she says, “Margaery said that maybe sleeping here would be better, I figured I would call Mom and tell her – someone asked you already, right? She said they did.”

_No_ , Jeyne thinks, _no, no one asked. Did you really think they would? Have you seen us? Of course they would ask_ you.

“Yes,” she lies, “but – Dad would get worried. I think I’ll head home now.”

“Are you sure? Because I mean, if you want me to talk to him –”

“Sansa, it’s fine. Really. I should get home already, but – it’s really not a problem. I had fun. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“Oh, okay. But I’m so glad you did!”

_Have fun_. Of course.

Jeyne heads for the door and grabs her coat from the hanger – as if anyone noticed – after saying goodbye to Sansa. She closes the door behind her, walks past the pool and out into the street. Well, the quickest way is into the woods, but it’s snowing now and honestly, she doesn’t feel much like braving it. She’ll just walk along the regular road into town.

Damn. Her shoes are so not the kind you should wear with snow covering the ground so quickly – she speeds up, bringing the lapels of the coat upwards. She shudders and walks faster – why did she wear _flats_?

Right. Because they matched her violet dress, the only nice one she owns. Sansa owns a lot of nice dresses, but Jeyne never looked that great in that kind of stuff even if she’d have liked to. She walks faster, and maybe it’s the snow or maybe it’s the way her eyes are burning with unshed tears, but she doesn’t notice the tree root on the side of the road and she trips over it – her hands break the fall enough that she doesn’t rip her stockings or get blood all over he dress, but not enough that her palms don’t get bruised.

She stands up, looking at her right arm – oh. She’s bleeding a bit, but it’s a scratch. Nothing more.

Jeyne shrugs, grabs a handful of snow, cleans away the blood from her hand and goes forward.

And then she thinks she hears a noise.

A weird noise.

Like a cat walking over dried leaves.

As if there would be a cat outside in the woods with this weather.

Still –

She walks faster. It can’t hurt. Damn, if only it was still day, but it’s November and the days are short, so it’s dark and it’s snowing. Well, she’ll be home in ten if she keeps up this rate. Good. So she can get some late tea, possibly have a good cry about this complete waste of an evening and move on with her life.

Sounds good. She just has to get home.

Then she hears that noise again.

But this time it’s _closer_.

She walks faster. She’s this close to break into a run but she doesn’t want to, if only because if she does she might really lose it, and –

No.

She goes on. And on. Another couple of minutes and she’ll be back in a real neighborhood. She will have a warm shower, before that tea, though. Now that sounds like a good prospect –

That’s when she starts feeling _cold_.

Not that she hasn’t been already, but now, her face is hit by a gust of wind so strong it almost knocks her off her feet and then the temperature drops – not much, but enough that her teeth start chattering and she has to slow down because the ground under the soles of her almost-ruined flats is too cold.

Then she hears that noise again, and again, and again, as if that cat was coming closer and closer and closer –

She doesn’t see the hand creeping outside the trees on her side.

She feels it when it touches her arm.

Jeyne turns to the right, screams with all the voice she has in her lungs and then tries to get away, but the grip is strong and those blue skeletal fingers’ grip on her arm is so strong she can’t do anything about it, and then her feet get caught in another tree root and that grip lessens but she’s already falling downwards and –

Everything is cold and slimy and damp as she falls through the hole underneath the tree.

No one hears her scream.


	4. you got to throw away the instruction manual

It’s probably a good thing that it gets dark this early, Ygritte thinks as she looks at the street cutting through Robb’s backyard. Otherwise explaining to Ned and Cat who the guy in Robb’s old coat coming home with her is might be a problem. At least they had all managed to get in the basement before Ned and Cat came home from work, and before Sansa and Jeyne also got home and started getting ready for Margaery’s party or whatever. Ygritte honestly never could guess what’s so special about Margaery’s parties or her crowd, but then again it never was her scene. Maybe it’s Sansa’s. Anyway, both Jon and Theon seemed to have ideas about what happened but wouldn’t or couldn’t put them straight – Jon did tell her that he was trying to find a way to explain it. She’ll just give them the benefit of the doubt given that Theon barely even speaks.

Anyway, Wylla and Dacey left just before them, Tommen decided to stay at the Starks’ overnight again, and now she really needs to get home without anyone noticing.

“Can – can I ask something?”

Shit, Jon really needs to speak louder though – she could barely hear him.

“Just ask next time, no need for permission. And you can speak up if you want.”

“I was just – what’s _that_?”

He gestures at the ground, which is currently all covered in soft white snow.

“Wait – _snow_? Well, it’s what happens when it gets cold and water in the air freezes – okay, sorry, I was being an arse. It’s just stuff that happens when winter is coming. And we’re close. You – never saw any?”

Jon stops for a moment, leans down and grabs a handful. He stares at it as it melts slightly against his fingers.

“No,” he says eventually. “I – no, never. It’s – nice?”

“You know,” she says, cautiously, “you do battles with this.”

“Battles?”

“Yeah. You and your _friends_ make teams and then who throws more snowballs at the other wins. It’s not bad. And if you have good aim it’s even funnier.”

“Do _you_ have good aim?”

Ygritte kneels down casually, and grabs a handful, then she starts shaping it into a ball quickly. “Case is,” she goes on, “we usually let Robb’s siblings win because that’d be mean not to, but in truth –”

She throws the snowball in his face, hoping that she’s not making a wrong call there, and she hits his cheek perfectly.

“In truth, I have the _best_ aim. Sorry, that was mean.”

Jon stares at her, but then –

Is he smiling? Just slightly? Ygritte squints, the light is bad, and then what feels like a perfectly shaped snowball hits her _from behind_.

Now he’s downright smirking, she notices as she looks back at him after yelping.

Ygritte has no clue how there’s any hope yet for someone who spent at least some fifteen years locked in a military base and has never seen snow before, but – she smiles in spite of herself.

“Okay, next time we do this kinda shit you’re on my team. But we really need to go, if someone sees you pulling that trick we’re fucked.”

He nods quickly and follows her home – she’s _really_ glad uncle Tormund’s not around this week. Not that he’d have minded, but still. Better keep it down for the moment. She has just taken off her scarf when the phone rings.

“Wait, I’ll take it. Grab some water if you want. Yes?”

“Ygritte?”

“ _Robb_? Anything wrong?”

“Uh. Sort of. I mean. Dad just called. Seems – seems like they found Shireen’s body.”

“ _What_?”

“In the lake. But just hers, not Myrcella’s, and that’d have been weird already, but – listen, uh, Theon is – he’s saying she can’t be dead. And Bran pushed for clarification but he’s just saying she’s not and that we should ask _One_ about it, and – listen, this is getting freaky. Bran, seriously, let the guy breathe! Yeah, okay, please tell me that Jon knows what’s up.”

“Wait a moment.” She turns towards Jon, who hasn’t still taken off his coat. She can’t avoid staring at those burns on his temples – shit, who even does _that_? “Uh. Seems like they found the body of one of our friends. But – Theon’s apparently saying it’s not real and to ask you about it?”

Jon’s mouth turns into a white, thin line. Then he moves closer to her, takes a look around and then stares up at her straight – he might be thin, but he’s as tall as she is and his eyes are so intense right now, Ygritte doesn’t know what to make of it.

“Tell Robb he’s right.”

“He’s – _right_?”

“She’s not dead. Neither – neither of them is. I – I can show you tomorrow. If you want.”

“Okay, but – how? How do you know?”

His eyes turn so sad, she almost wants to give him a hug out of principle.

“Because it’s my fault they’re gone. And – I’d know if they were dead. I – I told you, I cannot – quite explain it. But – I will show you tomorrow.”

“Are they still going to… not be dead, tomorrow?”

“Yes,” he says, and he sounds so sure about it, Ygritte figures that it’s not worth it to press.

She tells Robb the news as Jon goes to sit on the sofa in the living room, black clothes making him look way smaller than he is, and –

Christ on a stick, he’s such a sad sight, it’s making her sad in return for reasons other than _one of her best friends being MIA_.

She closes the call with Robb, then goes to the kitchen and grabs some chips – damn, she needs to buy food. Who’s had time until now. Then she grabs her _Star Wars_ VHS and throws the chips at Jon.

“Right. While you think about how to explain this shit to us tomorrow, you’re eating _something_ and we’re watching a movie or three. I need to relax. _You_ need to relax. Ever heard about _Star Wars_?”

“ _What_?”

“Yeah, I thought that. Lie back. No need to be that stiff. Let’s just not worry about that shit for two hours, damn it. Or six, if you want to watch the entire thing.”

He doesn’t say no. She probably should feel bad because she’s not wondering what the fuck it means that they found what sounds like a fake body, but she’s tired, she’s barely slept in the last three days and they both need a fucking break.

Also, if he likes Han Solo there’s some hope left for him, indeed.

\--

“That’s _not_ my daughter.”

“Stannis –”

“ _Davos_. That’s not Shireen. Period.”

Fact is – if only he actually wasn’t so calm, maybe it would be better. Davos hadn’t known what to expect – in years of knowing each other he’s never seen Stannis lose his calm or be anything other than perfectly collected. Maybe at most he would make some sort of subtle joke and it would be obvious if he was annoyed, but that was it. Davos hadn’t known how he’d react to a body which on top of being, well, a corpse, was also mauled by enough fish in the lake that most of the face is hardly recognizable. Still, the hair is how he remembers, the height is right, the clothes are supposedly what she was wearing when she disappeared and the coroner said that the cause of death was obviously drowning.

What else is there to say?

Apparently, that _it’s not her_. And if only Stannis was visibly pained or distressed or anything like that, Davos would have known what to do with it. He’s trained for it. He’s lost a wife and a _family_ – he knows how it feels, and the fact that it’s been five years has made it only slightly more bearable.

But – Stannis is not distressed. And he looks absolutely sure of it.

“Listen, I know it’s hard to take it in –” Davos starts, but Stannis shakes his head. Gendry is standing behind him looking way more worried than Davos has ever seen him in his life – that’s someone else who hasn’t slept a wink in the last few days.

“Davos. Did the coroner perform an autopsy?”

“No,” Davos says. “He says the causes of death were obvious and there was no need to prolong –”

“I am recognizing that body and burying it when I see an autopsy report, _signed_ , which I can read thoroughly. Because _that_ is not her, I know it’s not, and it’s not just that her hair was shorter. Or that the scar on her cheek covered half of her neck as well and _I can’t see it_.”

“Uncle –” Gendry starts, clearing his throat. “Maybe we should just –”

“ _Gendry_. I’ve been inside that room. That is not my daughter. When you have the autopsy report you can call me again.”

Brienne and Jaime Lannister have been standing behind them – Lannister’s face is pale as a sheet, even if he looks a touch relieved, and Brienne is staring at the corpse behind the glass wall of the obituary, and until now they haven’t said a word. Stannis just grits his teeth once, twice, and then he turns his back on all of them and stalks out of the room.

“I –” Lannister clears his throat, then grabs his jacket from a nearby chair. “I’ll go after him. I mean, I’m the last person he wants to talk to right now, but –”

“Yeah, go,” Davos says. “At least you more or less get it. Gendry, if you want to –”

“No, I –” He stops, almost chokes on a sob, then wipes at his eyes. “I think I should see to the funeral arrangements, I guess, but –”

Davos shakes his head and moves closer to the kid, puts a hand on his arm and squeezes.

“Gendry, you’re _sixteen_. You shouldn’t be handling that. And anyway, it’s past seven in the evening and that asshole Qyburn closes shop at six. And he’s the only mortician in the area. If I were you I would wait a short while, go home when you’re sure Lannister and your uncle are done discussing things and you should both get some sleep and come back in the morning. Meanwhile just go – do something that’s not worrying about funerals. All right?”

“I – I’ll try. Thanks, I guess. It’s just – if only I hadn’t been _out_ –”

“Gendry, it’s _no one’s fault_. All right? We’ll – we’ll see to this. You can go.”

Gendry nods once, even if he looks everything but okay, and then he also runs off the room.

Damn it to hell and back. The more this goes on, the more murky it gets instead of getting clearer.

“I guess I’ll have to go find the coroner,” Davos sighs. “After all, it’s not like he has to work every other day when it comes to autopsies.”

“Maybe –” Brienne says, slowly.

_“Maybe_?”

“Listen, maybe – maybe Stannis is delusional, and maybe there’s nothing behind it, but. But – why wouldn’t there be an autopsy? I mean, it’s regular procedure in these cases. You can’t _be sure_ about someone drowning if you didn’t check. And _he_ would know if the hair is the right length or not. And mostly, if Shireen and Myrcella were together, why _just one body_? The lake’s been dragged entirely. Am I supposed to assume there’s some kind of maniac hiding in the woods that we never knew about who took just one of them and killed the other? Fine, it could be, but wouldn’t someone like that be smarter about it?”

“Are you saying that this entire story is fishy as hell and we should be careful before letting anyone know we actually might be suspecting that it doesn’t hold up?” Davos asks, caring to keep his tone of voice down – better safe than sorry. Also because –

God, he wishes she was wrong because this only complicates it further, but she has a point or ten. And Stannis – Stannis is a lot of things, but delusional? Probably not one of them.

“I am saying,” she whispers back, “that we should ask the coroner for the autopsy _tomorrow morning_ , but that we might take a trip back here tonight.”

“Right. Let’s leave,” Davos says, and heads out of the room. Brienne follows closely. They say nothing until they’re out and on the way towards the station – it’s snowing still, though less strongly than before, and his coat isn’t heavy enough for this.

“Well,” he says, “I told you to forget protocol when it came to Lannister. Guess I can forget it too, but just because you’re right – that doesn’t add up. _Nothing_ adds up. And with all this mess I could barely get started on the bloody fucking _murder_.”

Brienne says nothing – there’s most probably nothing to add. They walk back into the station – the only one still in is Alysane.

“Inspector,” she greets him. “Your list of calls that poor Dontos made in the last week is on your desk. Sallador’s off shift, Payne is as well but if you need them –”

“Pod’s like, _eighteen_ ,” Davos sighs, “let him have his evening off. Thanks for the list, we couldn’t do anything without you here.”

“At least one boss who understands people’s value. No problem.” She goes back to checking whatever paperwork she was handling before, and Davos grabs the list.

“Brienne, if you want to go home, just do it already. We’ll meet… you know where. Is midnight good for you?”

“No one’s waiting for me,” she says, maybe sounding slightly sad, and then she heads out.

Davos figures he’ll just stay here until he can’t postpone it any further. He sits down and checks the list – there’s nothing weird, though. Food suppliers, more food suppliers, drink suppliers, nothing out of the ordinary when you own a restaurant. He’s about to write it off as a dead end, but then he sees the last call.

Why the _fuck_ would Dontos call _social services_ out of everyone?

Davos dials the number quickly hoping that they’re still open and that Brynden Tully’s around – he’s about the only person in that department he’s talked to regularly, and he will break protocol if it’s urgent.

Thankfully, he’s in.

“Inspector,” he says, “how can I help you?”

“Just a quick question – what did Dontos Hollard call you about two days ago?”

“Dontos? The owner of the restaurant?”

“Yeah, him. I mean, I don’t know if you were on shift, but if you weren’t maybe you could ask around –”

“I’m in charge of the entire office, I know who has gone out to check whichever case. And – sorry but as far as I know Hollard hasn’t called us.”

“ _What_? I asked for a register of his calls this last week and the last one before he died was to your office.”

“The hell? I’ll ask around, but – no one would not tell me. Wait, when was it that he called, according to your list?”

“Tuesday, around… five PM, maybe?”

“I was on shift. I’m sure we didn’t get any call that day, period.”

“I – I see. Thank you,” Davos tells him, and looks down at the list.

This makes no bloody sense whatsoever.

If he called but they didn’t receive it, then someone has to have intercepted it. Davos wants to laugh – this sounds out of some kind of James Bond movie. Who even has the means to intercept a call in this godforsaken place?

Except –

_Except the fucking military, maybe_.

Davos grabs the list, tears it in eight different pieces and throws it in the trash.

Now he _really_ wants to get to the bloody bottom of this.

\--

“Stannis, damn it, can you wait a fucking moment?”

Oh, _grand_. Now on top of everything else, there’s also _Jaime Lannister_ running after him, as if he needs any pity from the man whose niece is _not_ supposedly dead.

Because that was not Shireen.

He stops, because he knows the man is stubborn and he won’t let it go, whatever it is that he has to say.

“ _Jaime_ ,” he sighs, stopping, and wishing he wouldn’t have to because he _doesn’t want to be standing and thinking about that fake corpse_ right now. “If you want to tell me to be _reasonable_ you can forget –”

“Stannis, will you let me talk or not?”

And – he sounds exasperated, but not as if he’s being sparing him pity, which is – better than he assumed, Stannis figures.

“Now,” Lannister says, “I’m not here to give you some sad speech about being reasonable just because Myrcella wasn’t lying next to your supposed daughter, because while I don’t know what is _the other_ reason making you so sure about Shireen being alive – well. Thing is. As much as I don’t like to say it, Myrcella should be there, too. I mean, they were together when they disappeared. There is no bloody way that if one of them drowned the other wouldn’t have, too. It doesn’t add up. _Nothing_ in this fucking story adds up. And I know that it’s not like we’re... friends or anything, but since I’m in the same boat as you are and I think I’m inclined to believe you here, since – well, Robert was an asshole but he kind of was right when he said you had the imagination of a piece of stone. Hey, that’s true. But that’s also exactly why I don’t think you’re hallucinating this. I mean, you’re a lot of things but if it was Shireen on that table you’d have said it and buried her and tried to move on with your life So, let’s say that I believe you. Would you consider _sharing with the class_? Because if you have proof that Shireen is alive somehow then I would also get proof that Myrcella is as well. Wouldn’t I?”

That – that makes sense.

Stannis doesn’t know if he wants to trust Lannister with that – it’s barely even something he can believe himself, but –

But maybe if someone else sees it, he would have the confirmation he’s not slowly losing it.

Never mind that he needs – well, he needs to do something before showing Lannister, if he has to.

Never mind that if he wants one ally in this, it’s probably the only other person in his exact situation.

“Fine,” he says. “Come with me. I need to be at home to show you.”

Lannister doesn’t look too convinced but – he goes. They say nothing until the walk to Stannis’s house is over – he takes out the keys, tries to not let them fall because his fingers are slightly shaking, opens the door.

He lets Lannister in, closes it behind them and locks it.

“What is this secrecy?” Lannister asks, obviously trying to lighten up the situation.

If only.

“You will see in a moment.”

_If it works again. Who knows. God, what if it doesn’t happen anymore? What if she’s not there anymore?_

He decides that he’s _not_ going to consider that option until he tries it.

“Right. I’m waiting.”

Stannis doesn’t dignify him with an answer and goes to shut all the blinds in the room until the only light they can see is the lamp next to the sofa in his living room.

“Stannis –”

“Just wait for a damned second.”

He breathes in. He looks at the lamp.

“Shireen?” He asks again, hoping that she answers, because if she doesn’t –

If she doesn’t –

The lamp’s light shuts off. Then it turns on again.

Five seconds, then three, then five, then five.

Then a longer pause. Then three seconds.

Then another pause.

Then – three seconds, three seconds, three seconds. Stannis is timing it, looking at the clock, and –

_YES_ , again.

“What – what the fuck was that?” Lannister asks, his voice so thin Stannis can barely hear it.

“That was Morse code for _yes_ ,” Stannis sighs. “And – _this_ was what was going on here when I received that call.”

“You aren’t saying –”

The lamp shuts off again. And then it turns on and –

And it starts turning itself off and on almost furiously – it’s not five-second long pauses now, it’s way shorter ones even if it’s obvious that it’s still Morse code, and Stannis’s eyes are burning as he stares at the bulb and tries to keep count –

That is, until the bulb explodes.

Lannister grabs his arm and yanks him backwards before glass can end up on his face, and his eyes are tearing up and he’s seeing white spots in front of him when Lannister turns on the main light.

“Fuck me,” he says, “that lamp is completely gone for good.”

“What?”

“The – the entire thing _melted_.”

Stannis rubs at his eyes and goes back to look at the lamp.

The cover is ripped in pieces and the pipe – the pipe is _completely_ melted. He touches the base ever so slightly and it’s burning so hard he has to yank his fingers away.

For a moment neither of them speaks, then Stannis grits his teeth and looks straight at Lannister. “Do you _see_ why I have my doubts when it comes to my daughter’s so-called corpse?”

“Shit, that was – that was a reason, indeed.”

“And do you see why I thought it was not a good idea to say it openly?”

Lannister says nothing for a long moment.

Then –

“Do you have Christmas lights?”

“I would not – sorry?”

“ _Christmas lights_. The ones you put on _trees_ , Stannis.”

For a moment he doesn’t get the point. “ _Why_ would I need any _now_?”

“Because if this only works with _lights_ or lamps, if you put them up on the wall and I don’t know, draw a dot and a dash and a divider under them it would make your life fairly easier.”

The first thing he thinks is, _that is actually a good idea_.

The second –

“I don’t think I have any.” He grits his teeth – he knows he should try not to, but he can’t keep himself from doing it. Not right now. “I’m atheist. Shireen told me that she did not need the Christmas charade where I pretended to get along with her mother when she was five. We just exchange presents but… no trees or anything. So. I – do not have… Christmas lights.” Saying it out loud just sounds exceedingly stupid – not that he ever cared about all the jabs he heard in the last ten years about how much his poor child was growing up _joyless_ when it wasn’t true, but here it is, something that everyone with kids under the age of sixteen probably owns, and he doesn’t –

“Good thing for you that as dysfunctional as my household is, _I_ have some,” Lannister says, and Stannis is silently grateful he isn’t joking about it. “But since it didn’t happen to _me_ – right. Tommen is sleeping at Bran Stark’s again. I don’t see your nephew around here. Leave the poor kid a note and let’s go, we need to figure this shit out.”

Stannis doesn’t bother wasting time and arguing – Lannister has a point and they have interests in common, there’s no reason to antagonize the man on principle.

He writes Gendry that note, grabs his coat again and follows Lannister out.

They go the same way Shireen should have come from.

Neither of them says anything when they pass the part of the path still covered in police tape where they found the bicycles.

When they arrive at Lannister’s, he doesn’t even take his coat off before heading for what seems like a storage room. He comes back minutes later with a string of the aforementioned Christmas lights, a black Sharpie, a hammer and a couple of nails.

“Right. Let’s see how this goes, _fucking shall we_.” He hands Stannis one end of the string. “Hold it up, I’ll nail it. Let’s do it in the storage room so at least if I have to ruin a wall it’s not in the darned living room and I don’t have to explain it to other people.” Stannis follows him and holds it up silently as Lannister nails one end first and the other later – there are just three lights in between.

Lannister throws him the Sharpie as he goes to put away the hammer – Stannis draws a dot, a line and a straight vertical one for pauses underneath each light.

“Done? Okay, great.” Lannister attaches the string to the nearby socket, then he turns the lights on and closes the door – two are blue and one is red. It looks kind of sad, admittedly. “If anyone ever told me I’d end up locked in a storage room with _you_ out of all people six months ago I’d have said you weren’t my first pick to play seven minutes in Heaven,” Lannister sighs as he locks it. “I’ve got a notebook. Just tell me which fucking letter is which, if this works.”

Stannis is about to reply, and then the lights go off.

Then just the one over the dot turns itself on.

Then the one over the straight line, twice.

Then the one over the break line.

It’s a _W_.

Stannis dictates it quickly, not even thinking about what he’s actually saying – he’s too busy trying to translate it in his head when he thinks his heartbeat is about to go through the roof and Lannister is cursing under his breath as he scribbles in the admittedly poor light they have.

He doesn’t know how long it takes before the lights stay turned on without any changes for the moment, or so it seems.

“What – what did they say?” Stannis whispers.

“Uh, let me – _we are alive. Myrcella is here_. Fuck, yes,” he breathes out in relief, but that’s not what Stannis is mostly worried about.

“Where are you?” He asks, his voice barely audible. “We need to know, _how do we get you_?”

The lights all flicker off.

Then they flicker on again, quickly.

Damn, damn, good thing he could do this in his sleep or he’d get lost. The rhythm is almost frantic and by the time the lights are on steady again, he feels breathless.

“Shit,” Lannister says.

“ _What_?”

“It – it says – I think – I mean, I don’t know what the fuck it’s about but that’s what it reads, it’s – _it’s like Westeros_ , the hell is Westeros, and _you have to pass through the fog_ and _quick_? What – I don’t –”

The lights go off again.

Then they go on, then off, then on, then off, so quickly Stannis can barely follow, until he almost can feel heat coming from them and he takes a step back, crashing into Lannister just before all three lights explode and the ground is littered with small pieces of broken glass.

The other lights are still on.

He can see smoke rising from the broken bulbs.

“Jaime. What – what did the last message say?”

He turns his head right to look at Lannister and – he’s pale as a sheet.

“Jaime? _What did it say_?”

“… _be quick. They are coming soon_.”

“They? What – who is that? Shireen? Myrcella?”

The lights stay on, but nothing changes beyond that.

“Well, fuck this noise,” Lannister sighs. “Who in fucking hell is ever going to believe us?”

Stannis already knows the answer, which is why he doesn’t say it out loud.

With these premises?

_No one_.

\--

It’s cold and damp at the back entrance of the morgue. Brienne is only too happy to see Inspector Seaworth – Davos – show up right on time, because she was starting to get dizzy already.

“Do you have the keys?” she whispers.

“Yeah, at least this job has some perks. By the way, I think our murder is linked to Shireen and Myrcella.”

“What?” She hadn’t – well, she had assumed that it couldn’t be a coincidence to have such weird things happening in the span of two days, but still – a _direct_ confirmation?

“I looked at those calls,” Davos says, opening the door. “Everything is good and proper until the last one. To social services.”

“… Why would he call them? Wait – wasn’t there –”

“A kid in the establishment? From what it looks like. Anyway, I called them to inquire. And here comes the fun, because they never received that call.”

“Excuse me? They _didn’t_?”

“Tully was on shift, he said that afternoon no one called them and I have no reason to think _he_ is lying.” They close the door behind them and go straight ahead through the hallway. “Now, what do you say about that?”

“Someone intercepted the call? But _who_ would intercept such a call here?”

“I think there’s another question you should ask yourself,” Davos says as he opens the door to the morgue room.

“… Who actually _could_ intercept a call at all, in this area?”

“Right. Exactly that. And I think the only answer is the military, since _we_ couldn’t intercept a single bloody thing with the equipment we have. And where did the girls disappear? Near the military. Who wouldn’t let you in last day? The bloody military. Seems like wherever we turn, they’re there. Now, I have no bloody clue why they’d need to intercept such a call, but that’s another problem I guess.”

By now they’re in – Brienne closes the door behind her and turns on the lights while Davos goes for the only refrigeration cell in use in the entire room and pulls it open.

The body is covered.

She tries to think about the situation. There has to be an explanation.

“Hollard was calling social services,” Brienne says. “And we found footprints belonging to – someone young, didn’t we?”

“We did,” Davos agrees as he pulls off the sheet. There is their infamous corpse. The face is about unrecognizable and Brienne doesn’t recoil at it just because she’s witnessed enough autopsies while undergoing training at the academy that her stomach doesn’t mind it by now. Still, seen up close, there is something weird about it. She just wishes she had a clue what it is.

“So,” she keeps on, “the military intercepts it. And Hollard had some kid in the restaurant. God, this sounds right out of some kind of bad science fiction show, but – could it be that whoever it was escaped from the base and they were keeping everyone’s phone line under control to get them back?”

“That does sound way too imaginative,” Davos says. “Too bad it also sounds plausible. Also – wait a bloody moment! Stannis was right. There’s no scarring on her neck. I’m sure there should be. And – ah, damn it. Do you have a pocket knife?”

“Sure. Sure, here it is.” She hands him the one she always carries with, it was a gift from her father when she moved away for good – he joked that she wouldn’t need it in the middle of nowhere.

Yeah, not really.

“Well, fuck me if I’m wrong,” Davos sighs, and then plunges it inside the corpse’s throat.

Out of everything Brienne had been expecting, cotton wool coming out of the cut isn’t the answer.

Davos looks up at her – he shakes his head once before handing her the knife back.

“I think,” he says, “that we need to put this back where it belongs, stall somehow and find a way to get inside that godforsaken base, because that – that is – _who in bloody hell comes up with this shit_?”

“I don’t know,” she replies quietly, “but we owe Stannis some apologies. There’s just one answer to _who_ could put together a – a fake body in the span of two days. And I think you know that.”

“I wish I didn’t,” he agrees. “And we need to get out now before anyone finds out about our small stunt. Okay. Tomorrow we’re heading to Stannis’s and we’re apologizing and we’re putting our heads together to solve this. Even if I feel we’re getting way out of our league.”

Brienne doesn’t tell him that she agrees and that _this_ isn’t what she had been wishing for when she thought she’d like to do real police work, for once.

She shudders as they lock everything up again and leave the morgue as quickly as they can.

When they walk outside, it’s snowing again, you can barely see the street except for the snow covering the ground and she can’t shake away at all the ominous feeling that something here is very, very _wrong_ at the core.


	5. whatever you own comes back home to you

Davos calls the station to tell Sallador that both he and Brienne will get in later together, they need to talk to Stannis. Sallador tells him that it’s fine, he and Payne will hold the fort.

He calls just to check on Stannis, but Gendry picks it up sounding like someone who could go to sleep for the next five centuries and says that he found a note on the table reading that his uncle was off doing some business at Lannister’s.

Davos doesn’t ask him why he sounds like someone who hasn’t slept a wink.

He picks Brienne up, then drives straight to Lannister’s. She hasn’t slept a wink either. It’s obvious.

“What did you think about all damned night?” he asks.

“I was trying to put the pieces together,” she admits, “but – whenever it seems like we’re going somewhere, there’s a detail that doesn’t add up. We’re missing a lot of them. And on top of that I think we’re overlooking something that kind of got lost in all this mess, but I realized sometime around four AM and it just didn’t let me go to sleep.”

“Shoot. I’m all ears for more complicated bullshit at six thirty AM.”

She chuckles once, but it doesn’t last long. “Right. Not even touching the girls’ disappearance, Hollard calls social services, the call gets intercepted by someone who can only be the damned military and he gets shot in the head within the same day. There are footprints in his restaurant and it’s obviously someone young. Now, I was thinking, we found those scrubs in the woods, so maybe they belonged to the person going in and out of the restaurant. Not that it was this great deducing, but I thought I was going somewhere, because I can assume someone, most likely a minor, ran off that base, asked for shelter in the restaurant, Hollard calls qualified people and – you know.”

“Well, it’s a bit out of fucking 007, but it holds up.”

“Okay, and then why did we find _two_ sets of scrubs instead of just one?”

… oh, _shit_. “Damn, I’m getting old. I completely forgot in the midst of all this mess.”

“I had, too, until I just – well. Went and tried to put _everything_ together. I mean, maybe it means nothing but – does that mean it’s two? But then one never went to the restaurant? And whoever it is, _where are they_?”

“If they’re young enough for social services, whatever we’re discussing, hiding would be hard. Shit, I sure as hell hope this doesn’t get any more complicated than it actually looks right now.”

“Don’t you tell me,” Brienne agrees, and they stay silent until they reach Lannister’s.

She knocks while Davos locks the car and –

Davos didn’t expect Lannister to open the door looking like death warmed over with Stannis right next to him, looking exactly the same.

“We owe you an apology,” Brienne says, before this can get awkward.

“Excuse me?”

“You were right. About Shireen. That’s – not a real corpse.”

“We paid a visit to the morgue last night,” Davos adds as he walks up next to her. “And – it was full of wool cotton. I don’t know who’d go such lengths to mask it, but – well, apologies. You didn’t deserve us being that condescending.”

“Apology accepted,” Stannis replies at once. He sounds so tired, Brienne feels literal pain at hearing him for a long moment. “It’s – I could not ask you to believe me at face value, I guess.”

“Well,” Lannister sighs, “should we trust them with our latest findings?”

“Your latest what?” Brienne asks. They look at each other, and given that yesterday they were barely civil with one another this certainly is an interesting development, isn’t it?

Stannis shrugs and looks about to say something.

Then the phone rings.

“Wait,” Lannister says. “I’ll take it. Yeah, that’s me – wait? Who? Oh, okay. Seaworth, that’s for you.”

“For _me_?” He walks inside and takes the receiver. “Yeah? Who’s that?”

“Boss? That’s me.”

Why is Sallador calling him _here_?”

“Has something happened?”

“Uh – Vayon Poole and Ned and Catelyn Stark just got here with their daughter. Sansa, I mean. She’s in tears and can’t stop crying and Payne’s trying to cheer her up but it’s not really working. It’s – uh, her friend. Jeyne. Vayon’s daughter.”

“Yeah? What about her?”

“They went to a party last night. Sansa stayed over, Jeyne left, saying she’d go home. They were at the Tyrells’, so she had to go through the woods.”

“No. No, don’t tell me that –”

“Boss, she never got home.”

What was Davos saying about _hoping it didn’t get any more complicated than it was already_?

“Right. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Tell Payne to keep on doing what it is that he’s doing.” He sighs and closes the call. “Gentlemen, whatever you had to tell me, you can tell Brienne. I have to head back now.”

“Why?” Lannister asks.

“Because Jeyne Poole _disappeared into thin air_ same as Myrcella and Shireen, or so it seems Fuck, this isn’t helping –”

“Davos, I think you’ll need to hear this,” Stannis says quietly. “Because – maybe it’s related.”

“Yeah. They did say _something_ was coming.”

“… Who said _what_ was coming?” Davos asks, feeling like his head is going to explode.

Lannister shrugs and looks up at him. “We don’t know what was coming. But who said it? His daughter. And my niece.”

For a moment, Davos wishes he could ask them _are you fucking serious_ and _how did you even talk to them_.

But then he has to admit to himself that he has absolutely no grounds for saying such a thing.

“All right,” he says, wondering what he did wrong to deserve this when all his life he has staunchly believed that everything can be explained with nice, reasonable facts. “ _Tell me_.”

\--

Sansa doesn’t remember the last time she cried this much.

She’s sure she has never cried as much in her entire life, never mind that she can’t even bring herself to look at Jeyne’s father without starting all over again.

She doesn’t know how Inspector Seaworth has understood anything she’s said – she can barely understand herself, for that matter.

“I’m _sorry_ ,” she says for the umpteenth time. “God, I was so _stupid_ , I can’t believe –”

“Sansa,” the Inspector says, and he sounds a lot nicer than she’d deserve right now. “Calm down. No one died as far as we know.”

“But –”

“When it comes to Shireen Baratheon, we have reason to believe we might have been wrong. And the body was barely recognizable. Now I just need to know everything that happened that night that you know of. _In order_. Pod, give her some more water if she wants it. Take your time, okay?”

Sansa accepts the water, but there’s nothing to add really.

_She didn’t want to go, she only came because I insisted, I’m so sorry –_

_She stayed but not long. I think she was getting bored and I didn’t even take notice, I thought she was mingling? Even if she did tell me she didn’t think she would. I never should have insisted._

_She said she would just go straight home._

_No, I slept at Margaery’s, I didn’t call to check if she got home. I should’ve, I just didn’t even think about it._

_No, we didn’t hear anything. If something went on it was – far from her place. No, I don’t know anything else. No, there was nothing strange going on when we arrived there._

_I’m so sorry._

Inspector Seaworth closes his notebook and nods, then breathes in deeply – he sounds like a man who needs some rest and knows won’t get it anytime soon. “Right. We’re going to check the road she’d have taken and I’ll let you all know anything as soon as I find out, if I do. Just – we have leads when it comes to the other girls. If it’s the same thing – maybe we can sort it out. I cannot say anything officially for now, sorry to say, but – we’ll keep you updated. Sansa, go home and don’t beat yourself up about it. Everyone’s done stupid things when they were your age and it’s not your fault.”

Sansa appreciates it. She does.

Except that she knows _it is_ her own fault. Jeyne’s father asks for a few words with the Inspector in private, Mom and Dad look at each other before starting to discuss something.

Then Dad asks the secretary if he can use the phone.

“Sansa? Your father’s calling home, we’re going to ask Robb to come and get you since he’s not coming back to school until tomorrow and we’ve barely been at the shop this past week.”

Right. They haven’t been at the bookshop because they went on the search parties, both of them, and since someone has to mind it and they can’t afford to ignore the family’s source of income they should go open it again already. “And please don’t beat yourself up. It wasn’t – you couldn’t have known.”

“I could just not have forced her to come,” Sansa sobs.

“I’m sure she wouldn’t blame you,” Mum says, squeezing her shoulder. “We should go, but –”

“Don’t worry, I’ll man the fort,” Podrick Payne tells her. It’s so weird to see him in a uniform after he was three grades above her in school for years, but it’s a living. And it looks like he’s not bad at it.

“Thank you. Sansa, _call_ when you both get home.”

“All – all right.” She watches her parents leave and then she can’t help breaking down in tears again – Podrick hands her a box of tissues a moment later, and she notices that he’s kind of blushing and not looking in her direction. It’s almost sweet.

If only she hadn’t _gotten her best friend killed_ , most probably, she’d take back the _almost._

She blows her nose into some tissues.

“Listen,” he says – he’s kind of stammering a bit. He hands her another glass of water. “Really. It’s not your fault. Two years ago Gendry and I did a lot of equally dumb things. Any other day she’d have been angry for three days and she’d have forgiven you.”

“Everyone knew the woods weren’t safe,” she sobs. God, she feels so _stupid_ and useless. “And I still let her go because I was hanging around with the cool people for once, and – just, this morning I called at Jeyne’s to apologize because I realized I hadn’t been that nice to her, and – I don’t know who it was, some friend of Margaery’s I think, but…” She blows her nose once again. “They asked why I would even care about hanging out with losers who couldn’t even enjoy the party, and when they told me she never came back they said she probably kept some boyfriend from me and they left to hook up and just – it seems so petty now.” She has no clue why she’s unloading on the poor man, he didn’t ask for this most probably, and they never even talked once in their entire life before this point. But he’s _there_ and she just needs to tell someone.

He shrugs. “Well, I’ve never been much popular anyway. Neither were the friends I have. Never quite got the fascination, but most others did. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“I was _terrible_ to her.”

“Maybe, but she still would have forgiven you. That said, popular people are overrated. In my experience.”

As if – she spent years feeling like a loser because since none of her siblings ever was that kind of person then she also couldn’t be, and now it looks _not worth it_ in every meaning of the expression.

“Not a bad point,” she concedes, sniffling a bit. “But – they just – didn’t care. And what if she’s dead? I can’t accept that she might die because I wanted to hang out with _them_.”

“The inspector said she’s not and – hey, listen, I’m new at this police work thing, but one thing I know is that if the body isn’t there then you can’t know for sure at any point. I’m sure they’ll find her.”

_Like they’re finding Shireen and Myrcella_? she wants to ask, but that’d be majorly hypocritical of her, since she barely even paid attention beyond feeling moderately sad even if both were good friends with her own siblings.

She feels like throwing up at the thought, and that’s when the door opens and Robb walks in, looking like someone who also hasn’t slept much and worried out of his mind. He also looks relieved to see her in one piece.

“Hey,” he says, “come on, Bran said he’d worry about breakfast so we have some when we get back. Pod, thanks for keeping her company, really –”

“No problem. Get home safely.”

“Will do.”

Sansa grabs Robb’s hand as he helps her out of the chair, puts on her coat and follows him out after he grabs the bag she brought from Margaery’s – oh. She almost forgot it.

She thinks that when they walked together to school for a few years he had his backpack on his shoulders but he still would bring hers as well, holding it in front of him.

_And I barely even talked to him beyond the necessary for the last year or so_.

Her shoes are _not_ suited for the snow that waits for them outside – Robb stops at once the moment they’re past the door.

“Right. I’m an idiot. Sorry, I forgot to give them to you inside,” he says, and then he opens his own bag and takes out the only pair of snow boots she has. They clash with her dress but she doesn’t say a word as she puts them on and they start walking back home – he puts an arm around her shoulder.

“Hey,” he says, “I’m – I’m really sorry about Jeyne. I – I get it, all right? But I’m sure they’ll find her.”

He does sound like he really believes it, Sansa thinks, but the moment he says it she just breaks down in tears all over again.

“Sansa? What –”

“I’m – I’ve been _horrible_ ,” she blurts out.

“What? Okay, you’ve kinda been more detached lately but like, it happens? You haven’t done anything that bad? Christ, you’re fifteen, everyone’s an idiot at fifteen.”

_If only_. “Yeah, sure, and I spent two days worrying about Margaery’s _party_ when you and Bran had two missing friends and I barely even talked to you, now I put _mine_ in the same situation and you’re here at eight in the morning with my _shoes_ trying to cheer me up, and I –”

“Sansa –”

“I spent the last couple years thinking that if only you and Arya and Bran hung out with cooler people then other cool people would hang out with me and _what was I even_ –”

“Sansa, fuck, just stop a moment here, all right? Everyone knew that you’d have liked to hang out with the cool crowd and no one blamed you for it – I mean, Arya thinks cool people in general is a ridiculous concept, Bran can’t give two fucks and I think my friends are way damn cooler than posh idiots, but like, we knew you wanted that. No one thought you were an idiot or something for it even if we don’t get it. No one expects you to not be self-centered at fifteen, just let that go already.”

“ _You_ weren’t.”

“Yeah, as if. You don’t even know how glad I was when I massacred everyone else at D&D, I wasn’t _that_ nice. Come on, let’s just get home – get some sleep and they’ll figure it out.”

She wipes a few tears off her face while his arm’s hold around her gets stronger. “You seem awful sure about that,” she can’t help noticing. He does sound remarkably calm.

“Let’s say I’m an optimist,” he replies a moment later.

Another day, she’d have thought that his voice sounded weird, as if he wasn’t telling the whole truth.

But today, she’s really not taking notice of that kind of thing. She’s too worried and tired and sad for that.

She follows him home in the cold morning light and hopes that wherever Jeyne is, she’s doing all right.

\--

“Guys,” Robb says as he walks downstairs into the basement, “I think it’s time for those explanations. And whatever it is that we can do we should be quick. Since now Jeyne is also missing.”

“What? Jeyne Poole? Your sister’s only smart friend?” Ygritte asks. It’s obvious from her tone of voice that she’s not really feeling the joke and Bran can only agree with that feeling – the longer this goes on, the worse it gets.

Jon, though, _almost_ seems to smile the moment she says it. Huh. Theon is just sitting cross-legged on his mattress, staring down at his hands or glancing at either Robb or Jon once in a while, Tommen is sitting next to him looking worried out of his mind and Dacey and Wylla – who got in from the back while Robb was out to get Sansa – are sitting on Robb’s bed and also looking like they are honestly about to freak out.

“Yeah,” Robb agrees, and takes a look at the room before shrugging and going to sit next to Theon – Bran honestly doesn’t know how that doesn’t weird him out, but then again Jon’s fairly okay, so Theon can’t be _that_ much worse. At some point he’ll communicate with others, too, Bran figures. “Last night. In the woods. Also, Sansa said that Seaworth said something about Shireen’s corpse being a fake, so – guess they were right. So – what the hell is going on here?”

Theon stops looking at his hands and looks at Jon – they just stare at each other weirdly for a very, very long moment.

Jon takes a deep breath. “I – they never really explained it to _me_. They explained it to _him_.” He breathes in. “May I have one of your… phones? Later?”

“You can have it now,” Bran says, handing him his own.

Jon nods and puts it on one side for the moment. “In – where we come from. They are trying to –” He starts, then stops, then shakes his head. “I don’t know how to say it,” he blurts out, and now he almost sounds angry. “It’s – that _movie_ we watched yesterday,” he suddenly says, turning towards Ygritte.

“What? _Star Wars_?” She asks.

“You made him watch it _without us_?” Wylla asks. “That’s unfair. Or without Shireen. She knows all the lines.” And then she stops talking – her face suddenly turns sad.

“Listen, I needed to cheer the both of us up. It was the fastest way. Okay, never mind Wylla. Yeah, what about it?”

“What did you say when I asked you if it was – something that _really_ happened?”

“That – that it never did and it was, like, another world? Which was supposed to be like ours, some, but was just made-up?”

“Yes,” Jon agrees. “Yes, and – it’s like that, except that it’s real and they needed us to get there.”

Bran takes a look at everyone else’s reactions and – most of the room has a completely blank look on their face. Jon looks frustrated and Robb looks pensive. He’s also staring at Theon.

“You said _he_ knows?” Robb asks a moment later.

“Yes, but –”

“Can we do yes or no questions?” Robb bypasses Jon to look straight at Theon.

A moment later a couple of Robb’s books start hovering into thin air. He gives Robb a tiny nod.

“Great. So, he’s talking about the military.”

Theon nods.

“I guess that being military they were doing experiments on you by – finding some way to win wars quick and efficient?”

“Yes,” Theon whispers. It’s barely even audible. Another couple of books start floating around the both of them, but then they stop at once and they land on the ground. Huh. Jon is staring at them and the moment another of those books floats again, it stops when Jon moves his attention to it. Right. So they’re floating because of _Theon_ , but Jon is stopping them from doing it.

“He’s talking about _different worlds_ which aren’t real, though? Which means – oh, fuck’s sake, Jon, did you mean that like, parallel universes exist and they somehow used the two of you to – I dunno, tap into them to see if they could find something to use as weapons?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Jon says, relieved. “But – with me – it always was just – they would tell me what to do and I’d do it. They never explained. They said I was the key to everything and I was _important_ and – I think it’s my fault.” His voice goes down to a whisper. “They said I should open the door and let the Others in and then close it and handle the few which passed but it was too much and I started bleeding out, and they said it didn’t matter but I think – I couldn’t close it –“

“The – the _Others_?”

“They call them like that,” Jon says. “I don’t know what they are. I mean. They look like us. I guess. But they’re not. They’re… dead people? They come from somewhere really cold? I don’t know anything though, they just said they knew I could handle it if I was just _better_ –”

“Calm down,” Ygritte says, putting a hand on his arm. “I don’t think anyone here thinks it’s your fault if they just pointed you at it and you’re fucking Force-sensitive. Stands to reason your favorite’d be Luke anyway,” she mutters. Jon looks like he wants to object but then doesn’t – Bran figures that discussing _Star Wars_ isn’t the main priority here.

“Guys,” Tommen says then, “but – cold? _Zombies_? Because those things sound like zombies? Is that just me or does that sound like something out of – well. Uh. Westeros?”

“Sorry, what?” Jon seems very, very perplexed.

“Uh,” Robb says, “that game we all like playing, you – make places up and then go have adventures in them. It’s not for real obviously, but – anyway, I, uh, came up with one a while ago. And among the rest, there was supposed to be this huge wall-like thing that kept zombies out of the kingdom and it snowed all the time and was always cold where they came from. And it’s named Westeros.”

Jon thinks about it for a moment. “It – sounds similar,” he agrees. “I think we can call it Westeros then. Well – that evening – I opened the door. But I couldn’t close it. And maybe it was in the woods, or maybe things got away from the people at the base monitoring the entire thing. I don’t know. But I think – even if your friends didn’t run into the _Others_ – they fell into that door. And ended up there.”

For a moment no one says anything.

Bran figures that if no one points it out, _he_ will have to.

“So – our friends ended up in _another dimension_ filled up with zombies who can come in and out of it at least until someone or something keeps a portal open, and we should go get them back?”

Put it like that, it _does_ sound a bit like a D &D adventure, doesn’t it?

Only that people might die _for real_.

“Yeah, and how do we know they’re even alive?” Dacey asks, and yeah – that was probably what the entire room wanted to ask.

Jon takes the phone in his hands, then he takes in a deep breath. “Theon. _You_ were the one who was – better at this.”

“I’m not,” Theon blurts out, barely even looking at him.

“I can do it,” Jon says, “but – what if I make it worse? This mess – is tied to _me_. Not to you.”

Theon breathes in a moment, then he stares up at Jon. “You know what happened last time.”

Bran hasn’t ever heard him speaking that much in the few days he’s been here. He also sounds like he expects someone to slap him in the face if he speaks out.

“But the day we came here _nothing_ happened, did it?”

Bran doesn’t want to know what battle of wills is going on there, but then Robb clears his throat. “If it’s anything like what happened _the day you came here_ , it’s cool by me.”

Theon glances at him, and then his face turns resigned and he gives Jon a small nod. Jon hands Robb the walkie-talkie back, and Theon shakes his head when Robb tries to do the same to him.

Then he closes his eyes.

For a moment nothing happens, but then –

Then all of Robb’s books start levitating, the pages brushing against each other, along with the coffee table they play D&D on, _what is going on,_ and then the buttons on the walkie-talkie Robb’s holding start turning and –

At the beginning, they only hear static, but then the one they use to change frequencies turns, and then turns some more, and some more –

Until there’s not just static. It’s like wind.

The mattress Robb and Theon are sitting on starts levitating, too, but Robb takes it admirably well – he’s probably too worried staring down at the walkie-talkie and trying to figure out if whatever Theon’s doing it’s working.

And then –

“ – me see your identification.”

“You don’t need to see his identification.”

“We don’t need to see his identification.”

“These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.”

“These aren’t the droids we’re looking for.”

“Fuck’s sake,” Robb blurts out, “Myrcella? Shireen? _Are you there_?”

Bran’s just standing still as a rock – it was their voices. And _they were quoting Star Wars at each other_. That was Shireen’s favorite scene, for –

“Robb?” Myrcella says. Her voice croaks. “Robb? How – _how_ –”

“Never mind how, are you alive?”

“Yes, but we don’t know where we are.”

“It’s like _Westeros_ ,” Shireen’s voice croaks. “The bad part of it.”

“Girls, listen, we’re going to try and –”

Robb never finishes that sentence – suddenly the static comes back, the books crash down on the ground along with the mattress (and him and Theon on it on top of that) and Theon’s breathing hard, his nose slightly bleeding out. “Sorry,” he blurts out.

“Can’t you put them back on?” Tommen asks, and for the first time since this whole mess started he doesn’t look like death warmed over.

“Tommen, come on, he’s _bleeding out_ ,” Robb sighs. “Hey, that was –”

“Sorry. Can’t. Not – not enough range.” Theon sounds like he’s just ran a marathon.

“… What is the _range_ of whatever it is they have at that base?” Dacey asks, sounding fairly scared of the prospect.

“… More than that,” Jon finally replies when it’s obvious Theon won’t.

“We know they’re alive,” Wylla cuts in. “That’s great. Especially if we have to go find them. But we need to know how.”

“Maybe something with _more range_?” Tommen suggests hopefully.

More range would mean at least a radio station or something, Bran thinks, and _wait a moment_ –

“Guys. Guys, two weeks ago they re-opened the science lab at school and they have that fancy new modern radio station thing that you can use to talk to others schools in the States. No one ever uses it, but –”

“Oh, that would have range,” Wylla agrees at once.

“I – I suppose it would work for longer,” Jon agrees. Theon doesn’t look too excited about the prospect, but he doesn’t say no.

Dacey shrugs. “Okay, sounds good. Guess it’s good we apparently have two sorcerers in this adventure party, don’t we?”

Ygritte snorts as she stands up and pats Jon on the shoulder. “And no one is around there in the afternoon. Well, the science lab isn’t open today, at least. If we’re quick we can manage it, I think.”

“Guys,” Tommen points out in the general excitement, “that sounds great, but I don’t think that – I mean, _they_ can’t come with us with those clothes. Or – Jon, sorry, but –”

“I know,” Jon cuts him off, his hands going to the scars on his temples.

“Stop that,” Ygritte says, batting his hands away. “No need to hide that shit. Well, not now. Tommen here’s got a point, someone would notice. Also because there’s football practice today and we all know who is there.”

“Christ,” Robb groans, “all the assholes obviously. Well,” he says, “there are better clothes than what they’re wearing in my old stuff. Maybe Sansa has some wigs from her old Halloween costumes. We can find Jon one, I guess.”

Theon grabs at his shoulder and points towards his own streaks of grey hair. Robb shrugs. “Nah, you can keep them. People would think you’ve got them on purpose. We should get you gloves, though, if only to hide the hand. People would ask questions.”

Theon sends him a look obviously meaning, _who would even get hair like this on purpose_.

Bran can sympathize.

“Well,” Ygritte says, “I guess your sister is sleeping it off and the fewer people know, the better. Go grab whatever you find and bring it down, we’re going to figure it out.”

Bran heads upstairs with Robb, they’re the two people who knows where all the old clothes are.

“This is so bizarre,” Robb sighs. “Well, let’s hope my old stuff fits the both of them.”

“Hey,” Bran asks, “how – how do you feel about this entire deal? I mean – can we really manage?”

Robb shrugs. “Dacey said it, we do have two sorcerers. Hey, just – think about it in _good_ terms. We’re going to Westeros, saving our friends and slay some monsters along the way. It’ll be an adventure. How about it?”

Bran can hear that Robb’s saying it also in order to convince himself that they have half a chance in hell of pulling it off.

And everything considered, he doesn’t want to be the person pointing that out.

“Yeah. Yeah, that sounds cool,” he says, smiling up at Robb, who grins back.

He really hopes that Robb’s right.

\--

“No,” Ygritte says the moment Robb takes _that_ jacket out. “Listen, I am hardly the greatest fashion expert in the universe and I know that, but you’re _not_ dressing any of them in a goddamned burgundy jacket you only wore once if you don’t want them to attract attention.”

Robb shrugs. “Okay, uh, let’s just discard it. Guys, I’m shit at this kinda thing, there’s a reason why girls didn’t want to go out with me back in the day. Present company excluded.”

“I vote for the military pants,” Wylla says, glancing at the stuff Robb has thrown over the ground.

“It was a _Halloween Costume_ , it’d stand out,” Dacey says. “Shit, Robb, what the hell did you use to wear?”

“Uhm,” Bran says, taking a few wigs out of another box, “this won’t work, will it?”

“Christ,” Ygritte replies, shaking her head. “It’s _pink_. Who even used that?”

“Uh, Sansa. When she was eight, I think,” Robb replies.

“This one?” Tommen has a very _blonde_ one in his hands, turning it around. “If you cut the hair a bit it’d fit him…”

Wylla grabs it. “Ew, it’s _cheap_.”

Robb really, really can’t dress if his mother doesn’t pick his clothes, Ygritte decides as she goes through the content of one of the four boxes they brought down along with Dacey, and discarding most of what she sees at once. Can’t the guy just have something minimal in his wardrobe?

Then, two things happen at once. Jon clears his throat while Tommen lets out a small scream of triumph. “There we go, this is _perfect_ ,” he says, and he drags a wig out of the box which – which actually might work. It’s pitch raven, with curls, and it’s kind of feminine but it wouldn’t look bad on a guy after all.

Jon clears his throat again – he had been looking through another box on his lonesome and has a few clothes clutched against his chest. “Can – can I try these?”

“Sure,” Robb tells him, “bathroom’s over there.”

“Theon is in,” Jon says.

“Wait, _when_ –” Robb starts, then shakes his head. “Never mind. Hey, when you go in try this on, too – it should make you blend in. Well, better than everything else around.”

“Okay. I think he’s done.”

“How do you –” Robb starts, and the door opens a moment later.

Theon walks out of it looking like he’d rather shrink into a corner and disappear, but –

But –

“Damn,” Ygritte says, “looks like you have better taste than anyone in here put together.”

Theon sends her a _look_ that she can’t interpret while he moves away from the door enough for Jon to walk in, but – while they were arguing, he went and found himself a way more than decent outfit. A pair of dark blue jeans and an old _Empire Strikes Back_ t-shirt that Robb hasn’t worn in ages because the picture has almost faded away and he bought a new one. Given that it’s all white and grey by now it… kind of matches with his hair, as horrible as it sounds.

“She’s right,” Robb shrugs. “Definitely better than mine. Well, let’s see if Jon got it right, too, so we can all end this torture. For _me_ , at least.”

Did Theon _almost_ smile?

Ygritte doesn’t know, but – damn. Theon kind of creeps her out even if she knows that it’s rationally _stupid_ , but when he has almost normal reactions, he doesn’t as much.

She doesn’t want to know how he got to that point, really. They all start putting back the clothes in the boxes and they’re almost done when the door opens and Jon walks out.

And –

_Damn_.

He picked the only pair of black jeans Robb ever owned (he discarded them because _they were too depressing_ ), his only black shirt and his only black jacket which also were all discarded for the same reasons as the jeans, but they fit him even if they’re slightly large (not enough to make it look suspicious) and – it’s just, classy and minimal and definitely doesn’t stand out. And now that you don’t have the bald head with the visible scars right in front of you – well, that dark hair does pair nicely with the grey eyes, and Ygritte can’t help thinking for a moment that he’s _cute_ , actually very much so.

Then she shakes her head and wonders what the fuck is wrong with her – he’s younger than she is and he was _experimented on since he can remember_ , she shouldn’t even go there.

“I think you two definitely know better than us if it comes to fashion,” she declares. “Robb, find them some shoes and let’s go. The quicker the better.”

Robb goes to his closet and grabs a couple pairs along with some socks. Jon glances at himself in the mirror as if he can’t recognize the person in front of him.

Ygritte kind of wants to smash the mirror, but it’s not the time or place for it.

“Come on, you look like a real charmer.”

“What?”

“You look _good_. Now just let us all talk and we’ll manage.”

The kids go grab the walkie-talkies and Robb motions for them to go ahead before he locks the door – good thing his sister is apparently sleeping it off and Arya isn’t around, or this would be way, way more complicated.

She’s sure she hears Theon asking Robb if he really doesn’t _stand out_. She doesn’t hear the answer.

It probably wasn’t for her to hear anyway.

\--

Arya isn’t surprised to notice that all the flyers about Shireen and Myrcella that Gendry put up on the school walls are torn apart not even a few days later.

She wonders if anyone’s going to put some up for Jeyne Poole – she should probably head home now, while she and Sansa haven’t talked _seriously_ in a while she might need to do that. Shit, it’s not that Arya and Jeyne ever were mates or anything, but she certainly didn’t deserve that.

She also hadn’t deserved Sansa trying to make the both of them _popular_ in school, but that’s another point entirely.

She takes the leftover pieces of flyer from the wall and throws them in the trash, no point in letting them stay there, and kicks a few rocks as she leaves the school’s main building. If she walks quickly she can be home in ten. Maybe she can buy a couple lemon muffins from the nearby bakery, not that it’d cheer Sansa up but it’d be _something_.

She notices that the assholes who were being their charming selves to Gendry Waters the other day in the park are staring at her from a safe distance, but she figures they’re not going to try anything – she could take all of them at once anyway.

She has just turned the corner and started heading for the bakery when –

“Arya?”

She _hadn’t_ been expecting Gendry Waters to be standing on the curb, his old jacket obviously not doing much against the biting cold, looking at her with – apprehension?

“Gendry. Uh, can I do anything for you?”

He glances around, then back at her. She notices that he has a paper bag in his hands and he’s clutching it tightly enough to almost break it.

“No, but – maybe yes. Or the contrary. Shit, can I talk to you a moment?”

“… Sure? I mean, if you want it to be private –”

“I think your sister might want to know.”

“What?”

“It’s – it’s about Shireen, I guess, but mostly it’s about Jeyne Poole, and I’m not sure I should tell my uncle because he’d think I’ve gone insane, even if _he_ says that corpse is false, and –”

“Gendry. _Slow the hell down_. Of course I want to hear it. But if Sansa should –”

“I’d – I’d rather tell you first. This is already insane enough, I’m not sure I want to dump it on someone I’ve never even talked to before.”

She shrugs. “Fine. Where are we going?”

“To – to my place? If you don’t think –”

“Where I come from, no one assumes that boys invite girls home with _excuses_ just to try and get them to put out. And you look way too dead on your feet to even put a move on anyone. Fine. Let’s go to your place.”

She follows him – he doesn’t utter a word until he finally gets there. He takes out the keys, opens the door and goes straight for a room at the end of the hallway – Arya notices that there’s some broken lamp lying around in the living room, but whatever. It’s probably not important.

His room is – well, nothing scandalous. He has a few clothes scattered around, a few Rolling Stones posters on the walls, a small bed which was actually made. It looks like no one’s slept in it for three days at least. He sits down on it and tells her to grab a chair, and then he hands her the paper bag.

“So,” he says, “it seemed like they found Shireen. But my uncle was adamant that it wasn’t her body. And – I’ve been – let’s say that these last few days I’ve been around in the woods trying to see if something was up.”

“What? On your own? Are you _insane_?”

He shrugs. “Listen, what the hell should I have done? My uncle wouldn’t let me go on my own if I asked, but I can’t – I’d rather be there myself, all right? I mean, if it had been me and not _her_ -”

“… Sorry, did you just imply that you’d rather have been the one in danger because at least you’re not his son or something?”

Gendry shrugs. “Long story. Let’s just say my father was hardly a good example to follow when it comes to not making you feel like luggage no one really wants. And really, I love her like a sister and Myrcella never treated me like I was, you know, the proof her father cheated on her mother, I just wanted to _do_ something.”

“I don’t think risking your neck is the right answer, but anyway. Go ahead.”

“Yesterday I was around Margaery Tyrell’s house – I didn’t see Jeyne or I’d have told the police. But – I thought I heard something moving. And I took pictures. It was kind of going blind and I figured I was just taking wild animals for – something else. I guess. Then I went and developed them. Open that bag.”

Arya does and takes out a handful of pictures. One is of the woods, and it’s mostly dark – there’s some light coming by, probably the moonlight or maybe it’s from the Tyrells’ house, but that’s not the point. The point is that there’s _something_ in the corner.

Very far right, but –

She moves to the picture beneath – the next few ones are attempts to magnify that part, but you can’t really see a thing. The fifth one, though – is a very well-done attempt.

“Yeah, I had to work on it. It was complicated. But. _See that_?”

Arya sees that.

Arya sees that indeed.

“It’s – this is – fuck.” She goes through the other pictures – there’s another one, more or less similar, and the version focusing on _that_ not so small particular is entirely too clear.

“Gendry. This – this thing – it looks like one of those stupid zombies from D&D – I mean, not that I play, but you see enough of those cards around when you have two brothers into it. And you said it was near Margaery’s?”

“The house is where the lights came from. I didn’t say it also because – technically I don’t know if it was private property, and I didn’t want to get in further trouble, but –”

“I get it,” Arya sighs. He has absolutely no fucking self-preservation, but he has a point or two.

“And I can’t go to the police with _this_. They’d laugh in my face.” He sounds devastated now – damn it, he also has a point. You can’t go to them saying that hey, you saw zombies in the woods, can you?

Not that at this point _everything_ doesn’t look weird in the first place. Also, she’s sure that Robb and Bran got sort of secretive these last few days and she’d really like to know what’s up with that, but –

Well, Arya Stark never was the kind of person who liked to be idle when she could act.

“Do you have a baseball bat or something?”

“Why?”

“Because I want to go check that part of the woods out. It’s still day. Maybe there’s a chance we’ll find something. If we do we go to the police and set it straight. Or we can tell Sansa and see if she’ll back us up. Don’t say it’s _dangerous_ , you were on your own yesterday. At _night_.”

“… Fine. Let’s go.” He puts the pictures in a backpack he had near the bed, then – “Except that I don’t have a baseball bat.”

“ _What_?”

“Do I look like someone who _plays baseball_? Or anything of the kind? I mean, I tried out for football once.”

“I imagine it didn’t go over well.”

“It was with those assholes who were about to rough me up last day on the team, what do you expect?”

“Well, good thing that I can handle it, I guess.”

“I don’t think –”

“Let’s just go, how about it?”

He doesn’t object and follows her out of the door – good thing that they need to take just a quick detour in order to go where Jeyne disappeared. Then they can head straight home if needed.

“Do you remember the way?”

“Yeah, I wish I didn’t. Shit, it’s cold.”

“That jacket’s nowhere near good enough for snow.”

Gendry shrugs. “Well, I don’t have any better ones for the moment.”

Arya huffs and hands him her scarf.

“What –”

“Gendry, _seriously_ , you’re going to die of pneumonia before you die of zombies, if there’s zombies around here. I have a good coat, just take it. For my own peace of mind.”

He stares at her for a moment. Then –

“You know you can be bossy if you want to?”

“You’re not the first and won’t be the last to tell me. Never particularly cared for it.”

“It was a compliment,” he mutters, “but take it as you will. Right. Turn left. There’s probably police tape ahead if they checked it out already, but it wasn’t there. I mean, I took those pictures further down the path.”

“Right. Margaery’s near there. Let’s go.”

She takes a good look at the ground –

Wait.

Okay, everything is covered in snow, but she’s sure that Jeyne had a red scarf yesterday when she left with Sansa, and isn’t that something red peeking out?

“Arya?”

“I think I saw something,” she says, moving closer.

“Wait, I think – there’s something wrong here.”

“Tell me something I didn’t already know!”

“Yeah, but when was the last time you were in the woods and you didn’t hear a single animal running around?”

That is a very good question.

One she’d have considered, if she hadn’t already leaned down to take the scarf.

It’s indeed Jeyne’s – she can recognize it – and _why is it so far from the area the police taped off_?

That’s another question she would have considered in depth, any other moment.

And then she feels a skeletal hand close around her ankle and yank down.

She hears Gendry screaming her name as she _falls through the snow_ – for a moment she feels wet and cold and like the world is trying to turn itself upside down, and then –

She kicks blindly, and whatever _that_ was, her ankle is free for the moment, at least, and at that point she’s not falling anymore but she’s lying on a bed of snow way colder than the woods she left behind.

She opens her eyes.

There’s barely light to see by, and everything is freezing, there are trees surrounding her but they aren’t the same as the ones back in the woods, it looks like they’re moving or something of the kind, but not because of the wind.

There’s no wind at all.

Just biting cold, and then she looks up and _oh fuck what is that thing in front of her_?

She doesn’t know, but – it looks like a man, except that it has blue skin and white hair and torn clothes and sharp teeth covered in blood and _it looks just like whatever it was that Gendry caught on the camera_ and it’s leaning downdown _down_ –

Fuck that.

She turns on her side – that thing might be dangerous but sure as hell is slow, isn’t it – and its hand doesn’t grab at her as it moves towards her. Good luck to it, she thinks as she tries to assess the situation and places the best aimed kick she can in the thing’s shin – shit, it really looks like one of those zombies from that stupid game, but that’s not the time to think about it.

She breathes in, stands up and kicks at its side again and again before it can get up, and then she’s thankful for her good snow boots as she slides back on purpose on the slippery ground and she stays upright rather than falling down on her back. Christ, it’s cold, too cold for words, and _she needs to find out where she came from_ , it can’t be far, it obviously can’t be a door opening just on one side –

“ _Arya_?”

“Gendry?” She screams back.

“ _Where are you_?”

He sounds –

He sounds as if he’s speaking from a goddamned _different world_ , that’s what he’s doing, and –

Not the time to ponder about that now.

“Look _down_!” She screams, and damn, that thing’s standing up and she can’t go far because _what if she gets lost_ , damn it –

Then she sees a hand shooting up from – from a dark place near one of the tree’s branches, which are fluttering in the biting cold air.

She climbs the tree enough to grasp it and doesn’t resist as it yanks her upwards and _upwards_ and then there’s that same wet sensation as she’s dragged inside the dark area –

And then she’s lying on the fresh snow, the clear sky above her, taking deep breaths of air that’s nowhere near as cold as it was in the place she just left and with Gendry standing over her and looking like he is about to die of a heart attack as he clutches Jeyne’s scarf with his free hand.

“ _What the fuck_?” He’s almost yelling. “What – where were you? I saw that there was something weird there, but –”

Arya looks down.

There is no dark shape under the snow anymore. Just ground. Plain old ground covered in dirty snow.

She drags her jeans upwards, exposing her ankle.

There’s a shape like a handprint on it, so red against her pale skin that it almost hurts to look at it.

“I – I think I know where they are,” Arya breathes out. “And of course they aren’t coming back. If – if those things that dragged me down didn’t kill them, of course they’d get lost.”

“ _What_ is going on down there? I was scared shitless, I could hear you but you weren’t there –”

“It’s – a completely different place. I don’t know how to explain it – it looked a bit like the woods over here, but wrong. And that – that zombie from your picture, there was a similar one, and there’s barely any light to go by, and I could _hear_ you, too, but – fuck. It was creepy, I –”

“And what are you two doing _here_?”

Well, if that’s not Podrick Payne looking at them with the face of someone who doesn’t want extra trouble on his plate.

Gendry looks at her.

“I think we should tell him,” he sighs. “At least he should believe me.”

“Gendry, _what the hell_? I mean, it’s already fucked up enough that the Inspector about left with Sergeant Tarth and said that they had _leads_ to check and that I had to go and have a look at the area because – because they – apparently think I can handle it, but then I find _you_ two here and – what does she have on her ankle? Oh my God, this is just – I knew I couldn’t handle it, I –”

“Pod,” Gendry cuts him, “I think we need to sit down and tell you a few things. Arya, there’s no point, someone else would have found us out sooner or later.”

That’s – that’s a point. And since Pod and Gendry are at least mates, somehow, maybe there’s half a chance he won’t go assume they’ve both gone completely insane.

So they tell him.

Gendry shows him the pictures when they’re done, and Arya holds up Jeyne’s scarf without adding a word – it’s obvious that the poor guy is trying to take it in and he’s not at all amused by having to deal with zombies out of everything.

“I’d – I’d like to tell you both to go home and get some sleep,” he finally says. “But given what I’m seeing here – I – I’m not qualified for this!”

“Sorry?” Arya isn’t following. She also can’t stop thinking about those teeth stained in blood.

“I took service six months ago and up until now the most I had to do was _writing down fines_. And now – the Inspector and the Sergeant are nowhere to be seen because they have some leads to check, you come here telling me that all three of the missing girls or at least one is in some kind of other dimension where _zombies_ could kill her every other moment and we can’t waste time or they might die, and what am I even supposed to do here? And why are you here? You should have told –”

“Because our parents would believe us? In my dreams,” Arya sighs.

“My uncle has barely been in the house since Shireen left,” Gendry adds. “It was – well. It was either us or –”

“Well,” Pod sighs, “if I ask Sallador to help me out he’s – going to write it off as nothing.”

“What?”

“He’s a good guy, but – he would. I know he would. Also, he wouldn’t do anything without the Inspector’s authorization, and from what you tell me there is – no time to waste, right?”

“No,” Arya confirms. “But I’m not going back there again without – without some kind of weapon. It’s just not – I barely got out once.”

“Imagine what I would have done in your place,” Gendry says.

“Also, we should tell Sansa,” she says. “She’d want to know. Given how devastated she was before –”

“I remember that,” Pod says. “Right. I guess – we are going to check at the station. If no one is there, we’re telling your sister. Then – if Seaworth doesn’t have me fired I’ll be lucky, but I guess I can find us some guns. Damn, did I say that in the first place? Can _you_ even use a gun?”

“No,” Gendry shrugs.

“No, but I’m sure I can learn.”

“This is going to be a bad idea,” Pod sighs, but doesn’t say that they should call it off.

Arya keeps the scarf – Sansa will need that to be convinced, she figures – and follows both Pod and Gendry out of that particular patch of the woods.

She doesn’t tell either of them that the moment they’re far enough that she can see more than four houses at once, she feels utterly, completely relieved.

They head back to the Starks’ first – she had figured Robb and Bran would be in, but they’re not.

Another day, she’d have noticed that the wardrobe in Bran’s room is open and that a few boxes that haven’t been taken out of it in years are on the floor, but she’s too worried about everything else to even take notice of the fact that Bran’s door is open in the first place when he always closes it whether he’s in or not.

She goes straight ahead and knocks on Sansa’s door.

“Sansa, open already,” she says when she receives no answer. “I know you want to feel sorry for yourself, but I might have an idea of how to find Jeyne, so how about you –”

The door opens a second later – wow. She can’t remember the last time she saw Sansa without her hair braided to perfection or that touch of make-up she seemingly can’t stay without these days.

_“How_?” Sansa asks, before realizing that Arya isn’t alone.

“Wait – Constable Payne? Gendry? What – is that _Jeyne’s scarf_? How did you find it?”

“Long story,” Arya says. “Gendry, take out the pictures. And let’s all go in.”

Sansa lets them – her room is spotlessly clean and tidy as usual. Arya envies her for a second. Then she takes in a deep breath, shows Sansa her ankle and tells her everything – Gendry fills in the gaps, Pod confirms what he can of their story and Sansa takes it in admirably. She doesn’t even stop once to tell them that they should be talking to a psychiatrist and not to her.

“So,” Gendry says after Podrick shrugs and tells her that they’re all going to do a few things that might get him fired. “That – that was it. We just wanted you to know in case we disappeared so, you know, someone would have a clue where to come after us, but –

“I’m coming with you.”

“What?” Arya doesn’t even try to stop herself. “Are you _serious_?”

“She’s my best friend and _I_ put her in that situation, you can bet I’m coming with you.”

“Sansa, maybe –”

“ _I am coming_ , clear?”

“God, what am I even agreeing to?” Pod sighs. “Well, guess that we just have to hope to survive this, since I don’t see you changing your mind anytime soon.”

“No. Give me a moment.”

When she comes out of her room five minutes later, she’s wearing her only pair of jeans, an old heavy shirt of Robb’s that somehow ended up in her closet, boots that she hasn’t worn in at least two years and her hair is barely even tied together.

“So, are we going?”

And she sounds _really_ determined. Well, Arya will have to apologize to Sansa when this is over for having thought that she had turned really shallow these last few years. She kind of feels bad for it as well, but if they start overthinking this now – right. Not a good idea.

“Yeah. Let’s go so I can make sure I get fired within a day,” Pod sighs, but doesn’t say no, does he?

Arya is wondering if bringing Sansa along is really a good idea since she has a feeling that _she_ is the only person in their group who’s more or less qualified to defend herself properly, but convincing her not to right now? Probably a worse idea.

She really hopes they find at least one of them. She doesn’t hold much hope for Shireen and Myrcella at this point, but Jeyne only would be more than enough for her to chalk it up as a success.

And maybe their parents will not murder them slowly when they find out about it.

\--

“Listen, it’s not that I’m not flattered that when your boss called you decided that a nice hike with me beat checking out crime scenes, but really? You both left Podrick Payne in charge?”

“Pod – well, he has potential,” Brienne answers, keeping her voice way too low for Jaime’s tastes – that stated, she probably has a point given what they’re about to do. “And your _brother in law_ and Davos have a library to check. You could have volunteered to go there but I remember you deciding that it would be more amusing to follow me into the lion’s den. And it shows how desperate we are that we’re _trying to infiltrate a military base_ at four in the afternoon.”

“It’s not my fault if we have the training and Stannis sure as fuck hasn’t. Also I always was better at acting, not sitting around with notes.”

“Fair. So then don’t complain about _who_ we had to leave in charge, how about that?”

“You flush when you get riled up,” he informs her, and her cheeks go redder the moment he speaks.

She’d be almost fun to rile up, if it wasn’t for his disappeared daughter. Who is a niece as far as everyone’s concerned, and that’s how he’d like for it to stay. And as far as she is concerned, but it’s neither here nor there.

“And you favor your left side when you’re tired,” she sighs.

“Wait, _how_ –”

“I observe, Mr. –”

“We are about to _enter a military perimeter illegally_ and you’re still doing that? Call me Jaime, fuck’s sake. I already feel old when the kids’ fucking teachers call me like that.”

She looks at him as if she’s pondering whether being about to break the law with someone when _you_ are the law actually is a fair reason to stop being so damned formal.

Then –

“Right. _Jaime_. I suppose it’s Brienne for you as well, and I do _not_ flush.”

“You do. You’re doing that right now. Don’t be that sour, it actually looked healthy.”

She shakes her head and probably doesn’t tell him off just out of good manners or work ethics, he has a feeling. He kind of wishes she would because it’d distract him from the absolute mindfuckery of the situation he’s in.

He’s just really glad that the barbed wire fence Brienne has stepped in front of is obviously not electrified.

“Any ideas beyond _that_?” he asks as he glances at the cutters she has just produced from her backpack.

“Not really, but you are the one with the military expertise, aren’t you?”

Well, if anything she’s not treating him with kid gloves.

Good, because that’d be the worst thing he could think of right now short of – short of _the other_ worst.

He’s not even going to let himself think about the other worst. After all, he did – he did see that they aren’t dead before, didn’t he?

_Didn’t he_?

“Come on,” Brienne tells him, “this should be big enough for the both of us.”

She crawls under the hole she cut in the fence and he follows – for being slightly taller than he is and with larger shoulders she can crawl in very enclosed spaces, he thinks, but then again they both trained for that kind of thing, didn’t they?

“You have a future as a gardener if this police business doesn’t pan out,” he mutters as he stands up and brushes dirt out of his shirt.

“I don’t think cutting flowers is quite the same as cutting fences. What are we even looking for here?”

“An unguarded back entrance. I can handle it from there.”

“ _Unguarded_? That might be complicated.”

“Okay, then a _guarded_ back entrance with no more than two poor bastards on the outside. Possibly our size. If you get my meaning.”

“I do. I am really going to have to do everything I hoped I wouldn’t have to?”

“What part of _we’re sort of breaking the law here_ didn’t you catch?”

“You’re hilarious. Or not. All right, maybe we should cut down on the chatter. I see people over there.”

It is a back entrance. There are indeed two guards standing outside – too bad their faces aren’t somehow covered. Movies always make this so easy, Jaime thinks as he tries to figure out if they could actually wear their clothes. One of them is about his size. The other isn’t Brienne’s at all.

“Damn,” he says, “you think you could pretend being a guy long enough to use their badges to pass through? You have the size after all.”

“How fun,” she sighs. “You’re not the first person who ever told me that. Anyway, I doubt it. Let’s – let’s just get it over with.”

“Wait, _what_ –”

She moves from behind the bushes they had been hiding behind, and –

Well, damn.

The two guys do notice her coming, but before they can grab their comms and call someone, she has kicked one of them in the shin, knocked the other out cold and paid the second one the same service before he could stand up or reach for the comm he lost while falling down, and Jaime could barely follow her motions.

Christ, she’s _good_ , he can’t help thinking, never mind that damn it but that was kind of hot, up to a degree, and he hasn’t –

(He hasn’t gone there since Cersei, and he hadn’t thought he ever would again for that matter.)

He shakes his head and reaches her outside the door.

“Well, you’re definitely wasted in this shithole. You should apply for MI6 or something like that.”

“Yeah, well, I was thinking helping people out was better than working for the government,” she mutters. “I think I didn’t get that one _too_ wrong. Catch.”

She throws a pair of keys at him while she keeps on searching the two passed out guards – she grabs their guns as well as their badges and then the comms.

“Neither of them has clothes that can fit any of us,” she sighs. “Let’s just hope they don’t wake up for a long time.” Then she crushes both comms with her heel – in one go.

Jaime still thinks she’s wasted being a cop, all things considered.

Then she hands him one of the guns. “Let’s go,” she says. “I’ll check if someone comes.”

He doesn’t know how his fingers aren’t shaking while he looks for the right key – thankfully he manages on the third try. They stumble inside and he locks the door behind him – not that it will stop anyone, but still.

“Okay. Dark corridor, emergency lights, no one is in. If this was a horror movie, I’d be the smart guy who runs the fuck out and survives until the end.”

“Except that this isn’t a _movie_ and we can’t afford to be the smart guys.”

That’s, sadly, an entirely too good point.

He keeps his mouth shut as they go forward – it’s really not normal that they’re only running into empty corridors at this time of the day. There should be people around. Fine, they might not be in HQ or whatever, but it’s just not adding up.

Then he notices _something_.

“Uhm. Is that just me, or have we only seen _emergency_ lights up until now?”

Brienne stops at once. She takes in the fourth corridor they have turned in and then turns her attention on him.

“You’re right. So this entire area is running on an emergency generator? Which they couldn’t fix in _two days_?”

He ponders it. “There’s just one explanation. Whatever put out the electricity system that evening my – my niece and Shireen disappeared, didn’t just shut it off temporarily. It fried the entire generator for this area at least. And it fried it to perfection, for that matter.”

They are near a staircase now and the rest of the corridor is very much dark. There are emergency lights still on, on the upper floor.

“At least we’re in the right place,” Brienne mutters, and then she goes up the stairs. Jaime follows, and they walk through another dark-ish corridor until she stops abruptly in the middle of it.

“The hell, I didn’t –”

“Look at that door.”

Look at that, indeed. Up until now, there was nothing on the others. This one has a STAFF ONLY DO NOT ENTER sign on it that takes up half of the door itself, never mind that –

“The fuck is _that_ lock?”

“It’s – some kind of weird electronic thing,” she concludes. “See, there’s a keyboard to press the right combination in here.”

Like some kind of intercom, Jaime sees.

“Right, but _there’s no electricity_. In theory. Let me –”

She touches the handle, pulls it downwards and pushes. He expects that it would hold anyway, but it gives a moment later without her even having to put any effort into it.

“Shouldn’t the emergency supply have covered it?” Jaime asks as he follows her inside.

“I suppose not for now. Also, the keyboard wasn’t working.”

“Right. Let me get the flashlight. You can’t see shit in here, damn it.”

He turns it on and –

“What the hell,” he says when he takes in a mostly empty and sterile room with two beds put in opposite corners. There’s a small window in one corner, but you can barely see anything from where they are, never mind that in order to reach it he should probably climb on Brienne’s shoulders.

Other than the beds, there’s a locked wardrobe under the window and that’s pretty much it, as far as crappy décor goes. What he doesn’t like are the stains on the walls.

He moves closer, touches one. “Fuck me.”

“What?”

“That’s blood. I mean, it’s dried up and everything, but definitely blood. Also – what the fuck, this bed has _restraints_.”

“The one over here does, too,” Brienne says quietly before moving to the wardrobe.

“I don’t think we have the key for that.”

“I don’t need it.”

Jaime moves closer just in time to see her breaking the lock with her bare hands.

_What_.

“You’re really wasted taking fines. You should go into professional boxing if this doesn’t pan out for you.”

“I think I’m having enough excitement for a lifetime,” she says before opening the wardrobe.

There are two thick files put next to each other on one shelf, and the others –

“The damned scrubs,” Brienne says.

“Sorry?”

“Davos and I were trying to figure out why we’d find pieces of pink and blue scrubs in the woods. I mean, I found some while looking for the girls. Looks like that’s answered.”

One of the shelves is packed with scrubs, indeed. The last one is full of – meds?

He grabs a couple, then reads the other labels quickly.

“Fuck’s sake, these are either antidepressants or tranquilizers.”

“And you know that _how_?” Brienne asks.

“Too long to go into it. I might have needed the former, at some point. But the tranquilizers – I mean, this shit would knock someone out for a good half day with _one pill_ , what even –”

He never finishes the sentence – because then an alarm starts blaring.

Shit, _shit_ , that is exactly what they don’t need. Just when they are getting somewhere –

“We need to leave,” Brienne says, shutting the locker and handing him one of the files. “Come on, if we run –”

“If we run there’ll be ten people outside the door if no one else finds us first,” he interrupts. “I know how this works. And if they find you here it’s going to be a downright mess – ah, damn it. All right. I have an idea.” Which is _not_ going to work out great for him if everything goes right, but still – if Bolton or whoever is in charge gets hold of a police officer trespassing at his base they’ll never have a chance to see this through. “Keep the files.”

She doesn’t question it, good thing that, and he opens the door – there’s still no one coming even if they can hear noise from the floor below.

Right. But he did see a restroom just at the top of the stairs. He runs there, walks straight inside and hopes that there is a window. At least on that, they lucked out – there’s a fairly large one. He looks down – it’s not a huge jump down the emergency stairs, and it’s not on the side they came from before.

“Okay. Okay, now you grab those things, jump from the window, run like hell and go find Seaworth and possibly figure shit out and come back as soon as possible.”

“What? Why _me_?”

“Because I’m staying here stalling them. If I can bullshit long enough and tell them that I came in on my own they won’t know you were here and they can’t go and ask for you and Seaworth to lose your badges for it. No one is going to look for you if they think it was just me. Actually, give me the fucking cutters, it’ll make the story more believable.”

“Jaime, I can’t –”

“I’m telling you that you have to. Quick!”

She hands him the cutters silently, then she opens the window and sends him a look which – it probably meant to say _don’t you dare get killed_.

“I’ll come back,” she says.

“I don’t doubt that,” he replies. He waits for her to climb out of the window, he can’t afford to have her come back, and then –

“Brienne, if this goes pear-shaped and you’re too late –”

“Jaime –”

“– and you happen to find Myrcella, tell her – that her father is really fucking sorry that he couldn’t say goodbye, all right?”

“Her _father_?”

Jaime smiles down at her for a split moment and then locks the window.

Good thing he did, because ten seconds later General Bolton comes in through the bathroom’s door, and he looks _way_ beyond angry.

“What are you doing here?” He asks, and he doesn’t sound half as calm and even as he had yesterday.

Jaime shrugs and cracks the most charming smile he can muster under the circumstances. “Nice day to take a walk in the woods, isn’t it?”

Considering the look Bolton gives him back –

He really hopes Brienne is fast with figuring that shit out, whatever was in those files.

Or he’s going to be royally fucked very soon.

\--

On any given day, Stannis Baratheon would _not_ talk out loud in a library.

On this particular one, given that it’s empty bar him and Davos and that after five hours of _nothing_ he might have actually found something out that might help straighten this mess, he couldn’t care less.

“Davos, can you get here?”

“Sure,” Davos replies, slamming closed the tome he had in front of him. “I wasn’t finding anything worth a look in there anyway. What do you have?”

“Well, it took a lot of digging and it’s in that rag Varys used to publish back in the day, but – this woman Alannys Harlaw went and pressed charges in Southampton because no one would take her seriously in the entire county, so she moved to the next one over. According to her, her husband had sold their son to the army in order to – experiment on him or something like that. Then the husband came in not long after and said that she was schizophrenic and their son actually died in an accident, and since he had a regular certificate everyone assumed she was – well. Not in her right mind. But she mentioned _specifically_ the Winterfell base.”

“When did it happen? If Varys’s paper was still out it must have been a while ago.”

“This reads – August 1967. The kid in question was – four.”

“Do we have a name?”

“Theon, or so it says.”

“So if she wasn’t lying and this kid was four in ’67 that’d make him… twenty-one? Doesn’t sound like whoever went into Hollard’s,” Davos sighs, “but – experiment on him. In a military base. Does it say _how_?”

“No. It’s short and they basically agree that she wasn’t in full possession of her faculties. But it’s the only... strange thing that I ran into up until now.”

“I got nothing. Seems like they kept that quiet – well, good thing they said I could use the phone.”

Stannis re-reads the article as Davos calls Alysane Mormont and asks her if she can look up this Alannys Harlaw, and if she needs to call whichever other precincts she tried to press charges in, she should. It’s – barely even ten sentences. He thinks, _if I had gone to anyone else saying that my missing daughter was talking to me through lamps would they have taken me equally seriously_?

He can’t help glancing at the one on the desk he’s currently sat at.

Nothing happens.

“Right,” Davos says a moment later, “she said she’d let us know. I guess it’s official that there’s something shady in the county of bloody Dorset.”

“If that was meant to be a quote, it’s _rotten_ , not shady.”

“Good to see this entire ordeal isn’t preventing you from being your charming self,” Davos snorts.

“I have to be my charming self or I’ll lose my damned mind,” he sighs. “Well, let’s check more of Varys’s shoddy excuse for journalism, at this –”

The door slams open and Sergeant Tarth comes in, alone, with a uniform dirtied with both snow and pieces of leaves and dirt. She’s out of breath and her cheeks are so red it almost looks unhealthy. Has –

Has she _run_ the entire way over here?

Then he notices the two thick folders she is clutching to her chest.

“Brienne?” Davos asks. “Where’s Lannister? What the hell –”

“He’s – he stayed behind.”

“What?”

“We got in. The entire area was without proper electricity and we found this room which – well, it had two beds and a locker full of scrubs, meds and _these_.” She puts the files on the desk. They are very thick. “We were about to check them out but then the alarm started blaring and – he dragged me to a restroom, made me jump out of the window said that he’d stall so they wouldn’t follow me and – and we need to go get him. It didn’t look good at all, but I was on my own, and –”

“Brienne. Slow down. How long ago was that?”

“I don’t know. I ran the way here.”

“Right. Can’t be longer than one hour. And it’s barely six in the evening. Let’s just assume he can handle himself for the moment and let me see those files. If it confirms this story here –”

“Did you find anything?”

Stannis motions for her to come over and shows her the article. Davos tells him to go grab the folder he isn’t taking – he does, and –

“Damn, I think poor Mrs. Greyjoy wasn’t insane after all,” Davos says a moment later.

“Let me guess,” Stannis says, “is the first page a – a picture with a name, a date of birth, name of the parents and possibly some kind of identification?”

“Yeah,” Davos confirms. “There’s a picture – it does look like a four-year old boy. The date of birth is February 14th, 1963, so it adds up. Along with place of birth and the parents’ name. And – well, there _is_ a Theon Greyjoy on the name box, but – it’s scratched.”

“What does that read?”

“Project Zero. The hell. Stannis, what does yours read?”

Stannis doesn’t think he has even the words for the piece of paper in front of his eyes. There’s a picture of a baby – probably one month old. Nothing more than that. There’s a date of birth – January 1st, 1969. Every other box is stamped classified, except for the one with the name.

It only reads _Project One_.

He turns it towards both officers and lets that sink in.

For a long moment, no one says a thing. Then Brienne grabs the file from Davos.

“For – oh my _God,_ ” she whispers.

“What?”

“There’s – it’s mostly medical files. There’s – six blood tests for the entirety of the year 1967. And –”

“What?”

“ _The subject shows promising signs as suspected, but is reticent in a number of areas too large to make him an effective asset, for the current moment_. This is – dated February 1968? And – I took a forensics class in the academy, so I know some jargon, and – I’m sure that the file attached to this is – I mean, results of what happens when you perform ECT on someone.”

“Wait. You can’t perform ECT on a fucking _child_ ,” Davos says.

“They did. And –” She moves forward. “There’s a new picture and so on for every year. It – let me check. I’ll try to sum it up.”

“Davos?” Stannis is doing the same with his own file. “There’s a section – about goals.”

“ _Goals_?”

He clears his throat. “ _Project One is extremely gifted when it comes to telekinesis and _inter-dimensional communication_ , and he has already successfully made contact with the subjects we have currently labeled Others. It is likely that in a few years he might manage to handle controlling them and keeping the way-through open on his own, which would make Project Zero virtually useless; however, One is still not capable of maintaining communications open successfully the way Zero can, therefore we advise against scrapping that one yet, even if it is unadvisable to make use of it for any other reason given its volatile nature_. What do I even make of this?”

Davos looks about to answer, but then Brienne’s folder crashes on the ground and she puts a hand on her mouth before excusing herself and heading for the nearby bathroom. Stannis can hear her throw up moments later.

He has never seen the sergeant fazed, not much at least.

He puts away his folder and takes a look at the page she had been reading at the same time Davos does, and –

And then he understands the feeling. He understands it indeed.

“Stannis, tell me that – I read wrong and _General Bolton_ hasn’t written an _official authorization_ saying that they should keep _Zero_ around so that if _One_ becomes too stressed or worn-out or if they ruin something with experimentation they can use him as some kind of organ transplant bank.”

“I can’t, because that’s – exactly what this is saying.”

Brienne comes out of the bathroom looking like she could throw up all over again. “If you want a list of reasons why, apparently Zero was too old when they started _experimenting_ on him, and so he couldn’t – let’s say he has a few soldiers on his conscience because he couldn’t control his – telekinesis. I can’t believe I just said it. Anyway, they decided he was too volatile for effective use, but since for some random chance he was compatible with _One_ they decided to keep him around. Oh, and because he could do _communication_ and One couldn’t, whatever it means.”

“Fifteen years old _does_ sound like the kid who ran out of the restaurant,” Davos says. “So – the same night Shireen and Myrcella disappear these two escape from the base, one of them – One, I suppose – ends up in the restaurant, Hollard calls social services, Bolton intercepts the call, they kill Hollard to try and get their _experiment_ back but they don’t find him. That – doesn’t explain where Myrcella, Shireen and Jeyne Poole ended up, but it explains at least everything else.”

Stannis would have liked an explanation for the disappearance, too, but they probably should read the entire file to figure it out – what are these Others even? What does _keeping communication open_ mean? – and if Lannister is at the base _stalling_ they don’t have it.

“Then if they escaped and weren’t found again, _where are they now_?”

Brienne shrugs. “Either hiding in the woods, which I doubt since they’d have no water or food, or someone found them and is hiding them.”

“The latter sounds more likely,” Davos agrees. “But who? Then again, we can hardly go around town asking people about it. Especially not now. But – if we found them, maybe we’d have a chance of understanding the full picture.”

“There’s another thing, though,” Brienne says. “I mean, we know how they got their hands on the first kid, and – I guess it’s too late to look up his mother or his family. But the second – he has no registered parents? It says classified, but I can’t find anything in _this_ file.” She’s going through it, shaking her head the longer she goes on.

Stannis goes behind her, looking at it as she turns the pages over, until –

“Wait a moment.” He’s always been good at remembering faces. “Go back to – the last picture.”

Brienne does – the page is the same as the first, with a picture and the usual data. The only difference is that this is recent – the kid on the photo does look fifteen. Stannis tries to not look at the electrocution scars on his temples or at his shaved head – there’s _something_ about that kid which strikes him as absolutely familiar. How –

Oh, _damn it_.

“Davos.”

“Yes?”

“What was it that went on with Ned Stark’s sister and that man she ran off with a long time ago? I mean, I know my brother never quite got over it because he was hoping she’d notice him one day and she obviously never did, but now I don’t recall the details.”

Davos thinks about it for a moment. “You mean Lyanna? She ran off with some guy from London when she was nineteen and she fell completely off the map for a year? A year and a half? Ned was devastated and they never quite stopped looking for her even if we couldn’t do much beyond looking for them in the nearby area, since she left a note saying they were going to get married. Then we got a call from this hospital in Salisbury – they said she came in pregnant but delivered a stillborn baby and died of complications. I think. The hospital staff found some identification on her. They buried her in the graveyard just outside town along with the baby. Why?”

“Because – Davos, look at that kid and tell me that he doesn’t look like Ned Stark more than his other three male children, then we can discuss it again.”

He sees the moment both Davos and Brienne see what he has seen – they all look at each other, then at the picture again.

“I think,” Davos says, “that we need to go down to the station where Brienne and I will get a few extra guns, then _you_ go to Ned Stark’s with that file and inform him that there’s a likely chance his nephew was born very much alive and you all wait for us to give you news.”

“I can go to Ned Stark’s, but like hell I’m not coming with you later. I want to know where my daughter ended up.”

“We already put _one_ civilian in danger,” Davos sighs. “I shouldn’t – oh, we’ll see I guess. Let’s go before we’re too late. We might be already. And let’s just hope we find out where those two kids ended up on top of this entire mess.”

Stannis is not going to disagree and make them lose precious time they can’t afford to waste, and follows them out of the library.

As he goes, he sees both lamps on both desks he and Davos were using shut off on their own.

He fights the urge to come back into the room and see if Shireen will talk to him again – this isn’t the right time.

_Shireen, I’m coming. Soon, I hope_ , he thinks as he runs down the stairs and clutches Project One’s file to his chest.


	6. people who build their houses in your heart

The good news is that Robb remembered right – today the only people around school in the afternoon are the football practice guys, which means that if they manage to pass by unnoticed they’ll have virtually no issues with actually getting to the lab.

The bad news is that you _have_ to pass in front of the gyms and the yard in order to get inside at this time of the day, there’s just that entrance open.

“Right,” Dacey says when they’re close to the entrance but not close enough so that people would notice them, “we need a plan. They’re going to be here at least until six thirty and we can’t afford to waste almost two hours, never mind that then they’ll close everything down.”

“Shit, the coach isn’t even there either,” Robb groans. If they only had to find a bullshit excuse for Mr. Mormont – who also hates most of this team anyway because he knows they’re assholes – they’d be set, but all those idiots at once? Wouldn’t fly. “Right. Guys, we have to split. Some of us go ahead and distract them, the others get in from the theater club’s window, it’s back there. Jon, Theon, do you have to both be at the radio?”

They look at each other – damn, it’s so weird to see them in almost matching outfits – and then Jon shrugs. “ _He_ has to. I – I probably shouldn’t be. Not when he’s communicating with… _Westeros_ anyway, I’m – like some kind of magnet. To _them_ , I mean.”

Theon doesn’t look too happy about it, but doesn’t contradict him either. On top of that, like hell does Robb want Bran and his friends to be even near Damon and his crew. And even if both Ygritte and Dacey can pack a punch or ten, he’d still feel better being with them. Besides, there’s no one in the building at this time, so what could go wrong for the others?

“Okay. Bran, Wylla, Tommen, you’re going with Theon to the science lab. Talk to the others and try to find out where they’re hiding. Possibly somewhere we also can find if we get there. Dacey, Ygritte, Jon, we – we just try to distract those assholes the moment they notice us. The backstory is that – uh, you’re Dacey’s cousin and you’re here on vacation, all right?”

“Fine,” Jon agrees with a small nod. Robb is still awed that the kid reacts like a mostly adjusted human being regardless of _never having set foot off that base_.

Theon still doesn’t look too convinced, but he shrugs and mutters something along the lines of it’s _fine_ – Robb barely hears it.

Well, fuck that. He moves closer and speaks so that hopefully not everyone else hears them.

“Hey, you can do it. My brother and his friends over there are going to keep things in check, they pretty much helped around when it came to deciding what kinda radio the science lab was going to buy.”

“Robb, you don’t – I was _faulty_. Or so they said.” It’s barely audible. “I don’t know if I can –”

“You don’t look faulty to me. And if you can’t do it just tell them and we’re going to figure something else out. I’ll try to get rid of those idiots and come over there as soon as I manage, all right?”

“All – all right.”

“Good. And may the force be with you,” Robb can’t help adding – Theon just stares at him for a moment before shrugging and moving towards where Bran and the others are waiting.

“Wait, you showed him _Star Wars_ , too?” Ygritte asks him a moment later as they start walking away from their group.

“Well, I had to do something last evening. He seemed in dire need of a cheer-up anyway. And I showed him the entire trilogy, who do you take me for?”

“Guys, come on, let’s go distract the assholes or we’re never gonna manage this.”

Dacey has a point there. Jon goes next to Ygritte, purposefully putting himself in the least noticeable spot among the three of them – well, nothing he didn’t expect.

“Fine. Let’s go,” Robb says, heading for the gym’s entrance and hoping that he’s not projecting nervousness.

After all, if their small group can’t manage to get in and join Bran, Theon and the others they just have to distract the others for half an hour. Can’t go wrong now, can it?

\--

_“Come on, this way!”_

_Theon wishes they wouldn’t run as much – it’s not that he can’t keep up, but in his experience not running is the best way to not make people notice you, and he’d really rather not be noticed, should they run into someone else._

_He says nothing, though, and follows them until they turn a few corners and stop in front of a large door._

_“Right,” Bran says, fishing in his pockets, “I think I have the keys still.”_

_“Why did they give you the keys?” Wylla asks._

_“The science fair project. Which you are a part of, in theory.”_

_“Ah, right. Come on, open it.”_

_Bran does and Theon walks inside the room – it does look a bit like the labs at the base, but not enough to actually make him feel like he should run out and hide somewhere for the next few hours. Good, because if it had been –_

_He’s not thinking about it._

_The radio is in the far corner of the room – it’s indeed huge. If he doesn’t fuck it up, he could manage to hold contact for a long enough time._

_If he doesn’t fuck it up._

_His throat feels so constricted he could throw up._

_“Guys!”_

_Why is Tommen sounding worried?_

_“What?”_

_“There’s Mr. Pycelle coming by from the other side of the corridor and you know he’s going to want to go in.”_

_“Oh,_ shit, _” Wylla says. Then she turns towards Theon. “Physics teacher. He’s terrible. But sometimes he just comes into the lab to do – stuff, and he never comes out until evening. This is not a good thing.”_

_“Right. Change of plans,” Bran says quickly. “Theon, you go in. We try to stall him. Okay? Go.”_

_“But –”_

_“Now or he’s going to notice, quick!”_

_A moment later the door is shut in his face, and –_

_And how is he even supposed to –_

_Fuck. Fuck, he can barely even talk to three people, how is he going to do it with – with people he doesn’t know who are most probably stuck in Westeros also because of himself and One?_

_But – he told Robb he’d do it. And he doesn’t really want to disappoint the one person who isn’t One and hasn’t thought of him as some kind of_ thing _in years._

_He swallows and goes to sit at the console._

_Thing is – making contact with Westeros isn’t too hard. And he can feel where people who aren’t the Others are if he tries hard enough. If the two girls stuck together maybe he can just – talk for the minimal amount of time, and if he talks to One first he will be able to tell the others where they are if Theon can’t, and –_

_Right. He breathes in and closes his eyes._

_The radio turns itself on. The frequency knob turns, slow at first and faster later. Then faster. Then faster. He hears static, which is fine because he has to go beyond these frequencies anyway, and if he’s not wrong there’s a portal not too far from here, so it shouldn’t be too hard to tap in._

_He wishes he knew how he does this, honest._

_So he could find a way to stop himself permanently. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t, and –_

_Wait. He thinks he has someone near, but it’s not two people. He moves closer to the microphone, figuring that he should be heard at least, and then –_

_Then someone screams._

_“Who’s there?” He asks, and his voice comes out so shaky it’s a miracle whoever else hears, if they do._

_“What – who – is someone there?_ What is this _?”_

_A girl. Just one. And Robb’s friends seemed to have an idea of their surroundings yesterday._

_“Yes,” he finally says. “I’m – it doesn’t matter.”_

_“It does! It does, who is there? How are you hearing me? It’s so dark here and it’s cold and I can’t find – there is nothing except_ those things _and –”_

_“I’m Theon,” he blurts out, and where did that even come from? He could barely say it to Robb or One – no, Jon, and now he thinks he’s going to hyperventilate. “Please – calm down? I – who are you?”_

_“I’m Jeyne,” she sobs. Right. Robb’s sister’s friend. He thinks so, anyway._

_“You – you’re – you know Robb’s sister?”_

_“Sansa? Yes, she’s – wait, you know Robb?”_

_“I – it’s complicated. They’re looking for – all three of you. And I can – I can talk to you, but I don’t know for how long.” His throat is hurting so much he feels like he might spit blood in a few moments. “Please – tell me where you are?”_

_“I don’t know,” she sobs._

_“I – I kind of do. But – I need to know the exact place.”_

_“I don’t – it’s a forest, and it’s dark, and there’s no one else and those – those things are everywhere and I can’t – I lost my shoes.” She breaks down crying at that. Damn. Damn, what does he do? His heartbeat is spiraling out of control and she’s not telling him what he needs to know and there’s a drop of blood on the desk._

Her name rhymes with pain, _he thinks for a split moment. He feels like he could throw up. People are chattering outside the room still and he’s sweating and –_

_Shit. Shit, he’s bleeding already? He can’t be – he’s going to fuck it up, he is, he_ is _–_

_“Jeyne? Jeyne, I need a bit more. I know it’s dark and cold. I’ve seen it. I need to know where you are –”_

_A few more drops of blood fall on the desk and then –_

_Then a noise comes out of the radio and the communication dies down and smoke starts rising from the bulk of the machine._

_No._

_Oh, no, he thinks as he stands up, bringing a hand up to his nose and trying to stop the bleeding, and then he looks upwards and –_

_Oh, fuck._

_The radio’s desk is still on the ground but all the glass beakers in the room are flying up in the air._

_He did it again._

_No, no –_

_The door opens._

_The glass crashes downwards. Most of it breaks at once and the windows shatter at the same time._

_“What the –” Wylla says as she walks in. “What’s going on? Did you talk to them?_ What is this _?”_

_Three kids looking at you accusingly shouldn’t make anyone feel this bad, he thinks. He shakes his head. “I – I tried, but – I found that other girl.”_

_“Who, Jeyne?” Bran asks._

_“Yes,” he replies. “She’s alive but she couldn’t say where she was and then it started smoking. I’m sorry, I –”_

_“Great,” Tommen sighs, “and how do we explain this entire thing now?”_

_“I didn’t mean –”_

_“We know,” Bran cuts him off, and at least he doesn’t sound angry. “But this is going to be –”_

_“What the hell is going on here?”_

_There are people outside the window._

_Theon turns and –_

_And –_

_No._

_No, no_ , no _._

_He freezes as all of those friends of Ramsay’s who always came by a few times each month in the last couple of years climb inside the room. He’s a bit on the side, so they haven’t noticed him, not yet, but Damon will recognize him for sure, and if he tells –_

_If he tells –_

_“Stark,” he says, “too bad that we guessed your brother wouldn’t come by just because.”_

_“Where are the others?”_

_“Oh, just explaining them who Dacey’s_ cousin _is, since everyone knows that she doesn’t have a male one. And everyone’s seen Dacey’s entire families at volley games. I see that you had fun here, huh? I should definitely go and pay the principal a call,” he says, moving closer to them with a grin that Theon recognizes even too well –_

_He doesn’t even think._

_One moment Damon’s there, the other he’s levitating in the air and crashing into the opposite wall with his back._

_Then he falls on the ground, but he’s not moving much._

_Then_ everyone else _finally notices Theon._

_“But look who’s here.” Fuck. That was Alyn. He definitely recognized him._

_“What – what did you do?” Tommen asks, and now he sounds scared out of his mind. One of the others – Ben, definitely Ben – goes to check on Damon, and –_

_“Well, ‘least he’s breathing. But I’m definitely paying our common friend a call. You should be locked up where you belong,” he says, and –_

_A part of him is saying_ kill them all and be done with it you can’t come back you won’t come back please everything but that _, but the other part knows that if he does it he won’t be able to control it and what if Robb’s brother gets hurt, or –_

_“I’m sorry,” he sobs, “tell Robb I didn’t mean it.”_

_Then –_

_Then he breathes in and jumps out of the window and runs towards the woods. He can hear people screaming after him, but not for long – he’s out of their sight in a minute._

_Well, he always was good at running. Ramsay made sure he was._

_At least it’s going to be good for_ something _now_.

\--

“He did _what_?”

Robb doesn’t think he’s ever been angry at his brother once in his life, and he knows that this isn’t really on Bran, but – but _damn_ it, he had thought it was obvious –

“It was freaky, all right?” Bran says, defensively. “He just – fine, Damon’s an asshole but he just _flew through the room_ and for a second it looked like he was dead, and like, the entirety of the lab is ruined and the radio is smoking and we were just outside distracting Pycelle for a minute!”

“And you said that those wankers _recognized him_? How? Christ, and now he’s off in the woods, and –”

“I wasn’t going to say it,” Jon interrupts him, “because I think it was – his story to tell, if he wanted, but – I think you need to know a few things.” He sounds sad, but at least he’s not blaming them for having made Theon bail.

“All right,” Robb says, “shoot. I don’t see how it can get worse at this point.”

“Those – those guys, they – see, the guy who supervised what went on with us, he – he has a son. About their age. I don’t know how he became friends with them, but –”

“Wait,” Ygritte says, “you mean that creep who hangs out with them sometimes? They used to try and throw stones at cats back in the day, but he’s not around that much.”

“Yes,” Jon confirms. “He – see, the thing with Theon is that – Sir always used to say he was _faulty_ because they started late. I think – once he said he arrived there when he was four. Still – he could do more or less what I can, but he can’t control it. Not really. Sometimes he does, but most times he panics and – uh. He has killed a few people. Without meaning it. But – Sir just really pushed him and – he can’t control it. Not really.”

Robb can entirely believe it given Theon’s obsession with his supposedly being _faulty_ , but – he can’t believe that now they went and gave him the impression they think that as well.

“And…” Jon stops, seems to gather his thoughts, then he looks up at Robb with the face of someone who really, really wishes he didn’t have to say this. “Sir’s son. Ramsay. He had – kind of an obsession with him. Sometimes he’d come get him and they’d disappear for a couple of days and he’d come back – worse off. He – he called him – by a really horrid name. And – he cut off that finger a few years ago. That was when he just stopped talking.” He sighs. “I didn’t – that was why I was so surprised it took you three hours to get him to say _something_. Never mind his name. I never knew it before he told me in the basement.”

Robb wants to throw up. Honest, he wishes he could.

“Shit. _Shit_. Now we might have run like hell from there so no one will find us right this moment, but there’s the half-destroyed lab, that creep’s friends probably went and gave him a call and Theon’s somewhere thinking we all agree about his _faultiness_. At least Jeyne’s not dead as far as we know.”

“I feel like shit now,” Tommen says. “I mean, if I hadn’t asked…”

“Don’t,” Robb sighs, “you couldn’t help it. Fine. _Fine_. Let’s just – I have a feeling this is going to be a fucking bad idea, but if they talk to the military people they’ll know the both of you were with us. Dacey, you remember that abandoned mansion across town where we went planning campaigns up until it became obvious some ceiling would crash down our heads?”

“Sure I do,” Dacey says.

“Good. You all head there and bring the walkie-talkies. I am going to look for Theon and join you. Jon, no, I kind of would feel better if you were coming with but if _they_ run into some trouble it’s better that you’re with them. I’ll – I’ll find him somehow.”

“Robb, maybe you should go with them and I –” Jon starts.

“No,” Robb cuts him off. “If there’s military people after him and then they find you, we’re all fucked. You go with them, I’m finding him. Don’t worry, I can take care of myself even if I’m not the one who pulls the heaviest punches in this crowd.”

Jon gives him a terse nod before shrugging and doing away with the wig – it probably was itching, not that Robb blames him for that.

He doesn’t wait for the others to all leave and stalks towards the woods – now he just has to hope he doesn’t land straight in _Westeros_ same as Jeyne did, probably.

Fuck’s sake, he can’t believe that – that anyone would come up with something that sick and that the problem was that _they didn’t start early enough_. Honest, it’s a miracle Jon’s functioning that well, and he can’t even blame Theon for not doing the same.

And now who knows if calling out won’t make it worse, but – well, he has no other choice now, has he.

“Theon!”

Nothing, obviously.

“Listen, I don’t even want to know what went wrong but it wasn’t your fault, all right? If you’re there just – please come out?”

He waits for a long moment. Nothing happens.

He’s somehow not surprised. He walks ahead and calls out every five minutes or so, and of course he receives no answer. The sky is already turning dark purple when he arrives near that lake where they found – the body that wasn’t Shireen’s, apparently. His throat is hurting, he doesn’t have a heavy enough coat and it’s been at least forty minutes since he set out.

Damn it.

“Theon?” He calls out weakly. “Come on. Jon – Jon told us something. I know what went down. I don’t care, all right? I don’t –”

“Wow, Damon was right when he said you were really _that_ sentimental.”

And who is this now? Robb turns towards the voice he just heard and –

The guy behind him is about his age, maybe a year or two older at most. He’s wearing designer clothes – horrible designer clothes, for that matter, but even with the poor light he can see the very large Armani logo on the man’s pink shirt. He has dark greasy hair, a mouth with full lips that give Robb the impression of two worms crawling against each other – not a good one, at all –, and dark eyes staring at him as if he was some kind of insect.

Robb’s immediate reaction is trying to stare back at him because like hell he’s going to let this guy have the upper hand, and then he realizes what he’s just said.

_Damon was right_.

“And if you are who I think you are, I can believe you’re _that_ much of a bastard,” Robb replies, and all of a sudden the guy stops smiling and looks at him with pure hatred.

Robb is not liking this situation.

“And _that_ much of a stuck up patronizing asshole,” the guy replies, did Jon say his name was Ramsay, and then –

Then someone is holding Robb’s arms behind his back so tight it hurts.

Shit, Damon and Alyn. And the rest of the brigade, conveniently behind him. Fuck, how didn’t he hear them?

“Fine. So fucking what?” Robb snaps. He’s not going to make it easy, whatever it is they have in store for him. Maybe he should have let Jon come along, damn it.

“Well, I was informed that you and your friends apparently know where two of my father’s possessions happen to be. At least one of them. Or should I say, _One_ of them?”

“People are not fucking numbers,” Robb tells him. He tries to not scream out loud when Damon twists his wrist enough to make it hurt. “And that’s not his name. That said, like hell I’m telling you.”

“I don’t think you realize who has the upper hand here,” Ramsay says.

“I do,” Robb replies. “And I’m not telling you shit anyway. What are you going to do, cut one of my fingers? Please, do go ahead.” Then he thinks, _this guy looked ready to murder me when I called him a bastard. No one even thinks twice about that kind of thing. Unless_ – “I’d like to see you explaining to your _father_ that you hurt or killed a civilian with a family large enough that they’d notice the disappearance within a couple of hours. I’m not sure he wants all this advertising for whatever fire you’re playing with. Am I wrong?”

The left hook he receives on his face a moment later is enough of an answer – he was dead right.

“I just might,” Ramsay hisses, and now he sounds _pissed_. Great. Robb is going to have to bluff really hard to get out of this mess. “And I still don’t think you understand what you’re dealing with. I’m not saying that again. _Tell me where One is_. He’s the important one. When it comes to Reek, I guess I’ll find him soon enough. Couldn’t have gone that far anyway.”

_Reek_? So that was the infamous name Jon wouldn’t share with the class?

Robb can understand why. That’s not even a _name_ , for –

He knows it’s probably suicidal, but he couldn’t care less at this point. He was about to swallow down the blood that pooled in his mouth after that punch, but instead he spits it straight into Ramsay’s face.

Ramsay does not look like he appreciates the gesture.

“His name is Theon, you _bastard_. And _One_ isn’t a name at all. You can fucking forget me helping you out any here. You want to make your father happy, you can do that without me.”

At the second punch, he feels lucky he hasn’t had to spit a tooth out yet. The guy might be a complete creep and he definitely has issues when it comes to his father, but sure as hell he can throw a mean right hook.

“You have five seconds to say it,” Ramsay hisses, “or I’m throwing you into that lake and personally holding your head down until you drown.”

Fuck’s sake.

He means it.

Robb doesn’t know what it says about him that he doesn’t even consider believing that he’d actually survive this mess if he told Ramsay what he wants to know. But the only thing he can think of is _well, if you drown me sure as hell your little games in there will be over, too many people knew where I was going_ , and – he can’t give them up. He just can’t.

“Fine. Go ahead.”

Ramsay looks almost surprised at that. Too bad Robb can’t fully appreciate it or feel proud that he put that look there.

“You’d _die_ for those two freaks of nature?”

He shrugs, as much as he can in his current predicament. “They’re people, not freaks. And you don’t rat out your friends, which is something I think you all aren’t getting.”

“As if.” Ramsay shrugs. “I’ll believe in Reek having _friends_ when I see it. Throw him in the lake.”

Well, shit, that’s it, Robb thinks. Maybe he can try to kick one of them and run away if he catches them by surprise, but it’s unlikely that he could pull it off, could he –

Then Damon screams and lets Robb’s arm go, along with Alyn.

What the –

He turns just to find himself in front of Ramsay, who has a knife in his hand and looks bent on using it, but then –

Then Ramsay’s _not moving anymore_ and Robb’s floating into the air, high enough to be out of Ramsay’s reach, just over the lake.

Meanwhile the other six are bent on the ground, kneeling and clutching at their chest in what looks like abject pain.

And Theon’s just come out of the patch of trees on their left side. He’s still wearing Robb’s clothes minus the gloves, his hair is so tangled it almost hurts to look at it and Robb doesn’t want to admit to himself there are tear tracks on his face.

Maybe it’s just the moonlight. 

Ramsay’s eyes go so wide it would almost be hilarious if it wasn’t a question of life or death.

“Reek?” he says, and he sounds – incredulous?

Theon comes close enough to look him straight in the face and Robb is sure he’s never seen someone with a look of such pure hatred in his eyes.

“No,” he replies.

Damon tries to stand up and then goes back down again, still clutching at his stomach in pain.

Ramsay looks like someone who can’t make sense of this situation at all. “But – but how –”

“How am I doing what just _One_ could do, according to you?” Theon’s voice is obviously trying to not give it out, but it’s obvious he’s angry. He’s _really fucking angry_. “I don’t know.”

He takes a couple of steps closer to Ramsay. “But I know _he_ was about to let you drown him and I couldn’t let that happen.”

“And you _really_ think he’s your friend? Seriously? Have you seen yourself? The moment he sees what you do when you lose it you’ll wish you had known better.”

“Maybe,” Theon says, “I don’t care.” That sounded – liberating? Robb can’t honestly think of another word.

Then Ramsay lets out a scream as his hand goes to his heart, presumably, and –

His eyes go wide, his arms and legs jerk a couple of times as he crumples to the ground, and then –

The entire area is so silent you could hear a pin drop. You certainly can hear Ramsay trying to say something but not being able to.

“Ramsay?” Theon’s voice would be barely audible in any other circumstance, but right now it is. “ _Fuck you_.” And that didn’t just sound liberating, that sounded downright terrifying. For a moment Ramsay looks up at Theon in the same abject terror Robb had seen on Theon’s own face when he had found him in the forest, then he clutches at his chest and his eyes go wide all over again –

That’s just before he falls down completely, not moving at all anymore. Theon is looking down at him with utmost disgust and the others are still clutching at their chests in pain and Robb –

Robb is gently floating down until his feet touch the ground.

“You _killed_ him!” Damon shouts. “Oh my fucking – you killed him, you complete psychopath – what even are you?”

“You should know,” Theon replies quietly. “You were watching when he said that next time he’d cut off my tongue if I said something he didn’t like. I’m what _he_ made me into. _Leave_.”

Guess what, all of them immediately stand up and run like hell, not that Robb expected any less. They’re alone a moment later and Theon’s face goes from almost expressionless to – _worried_?

Robb shakes his head. “Jon told me everything,” he says. “If you think I’m going to hate you because of _this_ , you’re wrong. By the way, thank you.” Theon doesn’t look too convinced, but then again Robb’s voice is shaking a bit. Robb honestly can’t help it but given what just went down and that he almost died in the process he thinks he’s allowed it. Too bad that to Theon it probably sounds like he’s lying.

“No. You were in that – because of me, I –”

“Theon? I’m here because I wanted to be. Fine, I’d have rather not risked getting killed by that prick, but it still was my choice. By the way, you’re still my friend, and I’d be a pretty shitty one if I – shit, you did that because he was about to _kill_ me. And that didn’t look faulty to me.”

Theon shrugs. “I didn’t know I _could_ do it. I was terrified I’d kill you, too, because that was what always happened –” He stops himself, not quite looking at Robb.

“I know,” Robb sighs. Fuck’s sake, it’s not that he’s not somewhat freaked out, but no one could think that he’s standing in front of a cold bloodied killer in nature. And consider what he’s just seen of Ramsay, he can’t exactly blame the guy for what he did. Especially given that Theon went as far as he did for _him_. “I’m still not rethinking it. So, are we going to meet up with the others so they can apologize properly and then we can all go rescue a few princesses?”

“Sounds – sounds fine.” Theon sounds like he barely has any voice left. Robb can guess why. But then –

“Robb?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks – thanks for coming after me,” he blurts out, with the face of someone who’s hoping they did something _right_ , and –

Fine. Maybe they can afford to waste five minutes.

Robb grabs him by the shoulders and just hauls him in – fuck it, he has a clue the guy needs a hug just as much as he does, and when Theon tentatively grabs back, he grins.

“I owe you one,” he replies, and maybe it wasn’t a laugh that shook Theon’s frame for a moment, but Robb kind of hopes that it was.

\--

“And this,” Ygritte says as she leads the way – Jon is following her, not that he could do otherwise – “is what is generally called _awkward silence_.”

Jon is not sure he grasps the concept of awkward silence – he’s spent a lot of time making acquaintance with silence, sure, but he’s not sure it ever was awkward. Never mind that sometimes speaking out loud was just a bad idea all-around, but if it means that a lot of people are in the same place, no one says a thing and the atmosphere is heavier because of that – well, he supposes he sees the point.

“And it’s really becoming unbearable,” she keeps on. Jon honestly admires how blunt she is – someone like her wouldn’t have lasted long, where he comes from.

Being _blunt_ , after all, wouldn’t make you a very good test subject.

“So let’s just talk about _something_ before all the guilt you kids are projecting makes me want to start crying out of frustration.”

“We weren’t exactly _cool_ , before,” Tommen says. “I mean, we –”

“You’re _twelve_ , give yourself a fucking break.”

“And you couldn’t know,” Jon says. “She’s right. Just – it’s fine.”

“But aren’t you angry?” Bran asks.

Good question that. “I guess I should be,” he says, “but – it’s complicated. They never let us be friends the way you put it. We are on some other level, but I understand why you reacted like that. And maybe I was – I didn’t know why he would talk to your brother but not to me when we have _always_ known each other, but – maybe it makes sense. I don’t know. But I’m not. And I know your brother can talk him down more than I could.”

“Would it make me an ass if I said this is still massively fucking weird?” Dacey doesn’t sound that convinced, but Jon can imagine why. Sort of.

“No. I guess _anything_ about us is... massively fucking weird.”

“Shut up, no real life Luke Skywalker has any right to say that kinda thing about himself.”

He doesn’t know if he’s flushing – maybe he is – and he’d like to know why it’s so nice that Ygritte is freely comparing him to a guy who she definitely found cool, or so she said, but maybe he’ll have time to figure it out after this is over.

If it ever is, but he’s not going to think about it for now.

“So are you saying we should just – talk about something absolutely inane so that we don’t concentrate on how things might go to shit not long from now?” Dacey asks.

“That was about it,” Ygritte confirms. “Come on, young padawan, ask something about the real world outside that prison that you might want to know.”

_You couldn’t have asked a harder question if you tried_ , Jon doesn’t answer. There are a lot of things he’d like an answer to.

How does this whole _going to school_ thing work, for one. Or why did his parents decide he wasn’t worth keeping. Or how do you even _make friends_ without them having found you in the woods. But he has a feeling that asking any of that would make everyone else sad and that’s not what Ygritte is aiming at, he thinks.

Well.

There is one thing he has kind of doubts about. Which might actually distract them.

“Uh. That – that… d and d thing you always talk about… what is that? I mean, Robb was saying something about us being some search party before, but – I don’t get it?”

He had thought that it would be a fairly neutral question.

A moment later, _everyone_ is trying to say something and he only catches something about adventures and alignments and how boring or not they are – that is, until Ygritte claps her hands loud enough that everyone shuts up.

“Guys. We’re probably not helping here. One at a time. _D and D_ means dungeons and dragons. It’s a _game_. Like, you have a board and cards and dice and a manual. I guess it’s not the kind of stuff used for recreational activity where you come from?”

Jon thinks about it for a moment. “Like Monopoly?”

“That’s – the basic idea, yes. How do you even know that?”

He shrugs. “Sometimes the people keeping an eye on us would play it.”

“Fuck’s sake. Anyway, the idea is that you and your friends are a party of adventurers going around in a place – well, sort of like the one those zombies of yours come from. That’s why they were calling it Westeros.”

“So – that doesn’t _really_ exist?”

“Nah,” Bran butts in, “that’s all in Robb’s head. See, the game works like, everyone is a member of the party, but one person narrates the story and decides what monsters you’re fake-facing and so on. Sometimes if they’re good they come up with the other places to play in other than the official ones from the game. That’s the dungeon master.”

“So, Robb is one?”

“Yeah,” Bran says, “and Shireen also wa – is one. We all used Westeros to play in, though, because it was cool. That’s why she used it to describe – where she is now. Are you following for now?”

“I – I think so.”

“Okay,” Wylla cuts in. “So, you can be different things. Every party should be balanced – I mean, if you have four warriors without wizards good luck having someone who heals you when you get hurt. Fake-hurt, I mean. It’s kinda complicated but let’s just say that you can be a fighter, a wizard, a cleric, a rogue or a ranger. Then there’s other classes but they’re like, sub-classes. For example, since Robb’s a good DM but he’s boring as hell when it comes to characters, he’s always been a paladin. Paladins are like, fighters but the kind of self-sacrificing holier than thou _good_ ones. He can’t even play anything else, he sucks at not being a paladin.”

“Don’t mind her,” Tommen says, “she’s just bragging because she’s the only one in this group who actually _likes_ playing chaotic evil.”

“Chaotic… evil?”

“Right. Uh, so, when you make up your character, you have to give them a backstory and a personality and that kinda stuff. The alignments are the personality traits. There’s good, neutral and evil but then there’s more. Lawful good is when you’re good but wouldn’t break the law, neutral good is when you do good things but sometimes don’t care for the law if it’s in your way, chaotic good is – you’ll do _anything_ for what you think is the right reason. Well, most times it’s a good reason, but still.”

“Then there’s the neutral ones,” Dacey goes on. “Lawful neutral is someone who just follows the rules regardless of the outcome, true neutral is someone who really doesn’t care for any of these things or is – like, balanced and doesn’t favor anyone. Chaotic neutral is when you don’t give a fuck about rules and the likes and look out for yourself first and everyone else later. You’re not evil or the likes but you just don’t care. Evil is – lawful evil is a bad guy who follows the rules and exploits them, neutral evils are assholes who just care about themselves and will do anything to make their own interests. But without going out of their way to be evil for the sake of it, if it makes sense. Chaotic evil is just – that. I mean, being a horrid person for the sake of it.”

Jon takes that in. It’s – it kind of makes sense. He has a feeling that according to that chart, Sir would be a lawful evil and his son would be a chaotic evil, but he doesn’t voice that for now.

“So,” Bran keeps on, “you have to pick a character and then you make up a party and go on adventures. That’s about it. Okay, it’s kind of complicated if you never played it before, but when you get the hang of it…”

“Just to finish,” Ygritte says, “they were talking about Robb’s infamous paladin character? Right. He’s lawful good. Because paladins in theory should always be lawful good and they’re right, he’s so _nice_ it’s downright boring, but you need that kinda character when you play. Also he’s great at healing you and he’s had it for years, so it’s leveled crazy high. And like, paladins are supposed to slay monsters and protect the weak and be all nice, so he does that well. Oh, here is the manor, lucky us. Let’s hope it doesn’t fall on our heads.”

“I – I think I get it,” Jon says. “I imagine you’re not a paladin?”

“What? No! I’d suck. I’m a rogue. It’s great. Right, kids, let’s just go in and wait it out.”

They end up not going far from the entrance – there’s a large staircase going upwards, but it’s wood and it’s halfway broken, and Ygritte is adamant that every other ceiling in the mansion is likely to fall down on their heads. The floor is covered in dust and you can only see because all the windows are broken and moonlight pours in.

Jon doesn’t tell them that he thinks there’s another potential portal to – to _Westeros_ – quite close.

Maybe he should, but he’d rather wait until he can’t postpone it anymore. If only because he knows that he has to be the one closing the access forever, and he knows he won’t likely survive it unless he comes up with an alternative.

So he lets the others explain him the nuances of this dungeons and dragons game – which looks way too complicated beyond the basics, but at least they’re discussing something else that isn’t the fact that neither Robb or Theon are here and that they should be.

He doesn’t know how long it takes for Bran to finally ask the question he had been expecting, and he doesn’t know how to break it to him that while to _them_ it sounds boring, a lawful good paladin option sounds good to _him_ – it’d be everything he wishes he could have been and everything he hasn’t up untl now.

Then the door opens. Everyone jerks towards it as it does, fearing the worst for one moment.

“Well, good to see at least everyone is here in one piece.” They can’t see Robb but that was definitely his voice. “Right. It’s them, get in and let’s lock the door.”

Jon hadn’t known how relieved he’d feel at seeing Theon follow Robb inside and towards the rest of them, never mind that he looks tired and pale and not exactly at his best. Then again, when has any of them looked at their best? Theon is sending a worried look towards the whole lot of them, which is understandable, but then Bran stands up when they reach them.

“I’m sorry,” he says, without preambles. “We fucked it up. I know you didn’t mean it.”

Tommen does the same. “I’m – I shouldn’t have told you – what I did. Sorry, I’m just – on edge. I’ve been since my sister disappeared. But you didn’t deserve that.”

“Admittedly,” Wylla goes on, “that was completely _insane_ , I mean, not in the bad way, but – shit, as freaky as it was it’s not like you meant it and you couldn’t help it and you warned us. So. Sorry?”

Theon looks like he’s about to cry.

Jon thinks he can feel him. He would be too, if he had been in his position, and it’s not like he hasn’t wondered sometimes, _does he hate me because he’s supposedly faulty and I’m not_? Would he have hated himself, had he been in that position?

“It’s – fine,” Theon blurts out a moment later. “Thanks. I – I get it.”

“You don’t look too sure of it,” Bran says, “but I guess we’ll take it.”

“Come on,” Ygritte says, “just come sit already and join the not-so-cool-kids club officially instead of just standing there. We were in the middle of some serious discussion here.”

“Ygritte, I’m not sure D&D is that serious. Come on, we need to plan,” Dacey says as both Robb and Theon sit down on the ground. Then Theon puts a hand on Jon’s arm.

“O – _Jon_?” He asks, and the chattering dies down.

“Yes?”

“I think – I think I can control it. Maybe.”

“ _How_?” Jon thinks he’s going to have to redefine _relieved_ – now he’s feeling that. Because if Theon means what Jon thinks he means –

If it’s true –

“I – I don’t know but – I guess they should know.”

“You don’t have to share,” Robb says, but it’s weak.

“No,” Theon says, “I do. I – after I ran, I just – I could hear Robb calling, but I didn’t think – I hoped he’d get tired and move on. I was sure I’d end up getting it wrong and killing him or something.” He looks down at his hands. “Then I heard other people coming. And – Jon, it was – it was Ramsay.”

“What? Along with –”

“Along with his friends, yes. They wanted him to – give us up, I guess, and he didn’t, and Ramsay was about to have them drown him, and –” He stops, and he shakes his head once, twice, but before Robb can step in he starts talking again. “I don’t know how it is for you, but I knew I had to stop it, and – I –”

“Wait, you _killed_ him?” It’s not that he reads minds. But he can feel things if people are emotional. Theon nods once, not quite looking at him.

“I can’t blame you,” Jon says. “And I shouldn’t – I’m the last person who can go and judge you, I guess. Go on.”

“I killed _just_ him. Not his friends. Not _Robb_. Everything went the way I wanted to. I don’t know how I did it but if it’s not – I’m not _faulty_ at this point, am I?” He sounds as if he’s desperately hoping someone will tell him that he’s not at this point. Which - well. Makes sense, Jon figures, given what just went down. Personally, he has no doubts, but the others _might_ freak out all over again.

“You never – fine. I guess not. So – you could do that _again_ if there was the need?”

“I could try,” Theon shrugs. Well, good thing that.

“Wait, who was this _Ramsay_?” Wylla asks.

“The son of the guy who turned them into science experiments,” Ygritte replies. She sounds _angry_ about that. “And who I suppose was bent on keeping alive that legacy.”

“And who was about to kill _me_ ,” Robb adds. “Christ, that was bad.”

“Well, Mom is going to have your hide when she sees your face,” Bran says. He’s speaking slowly, and his voice is a tad too shaky for him to sound actually _fine_ even if he’s not taking back his apologies. Better than what Theon was fearing, probably. It’s nothing one wouldn’t expect in this kind of situation, honestly. “And – right. We’ve fake-killed bad guys for _years_. I guess freaking out for good now is – a bit too late?”

Jon doesn’t know if it’s a good thing or not that then one of the walkie-talkies starts beeping.

“ _Damn_ ,” Dacey says. “Don’t pick it up. Don’t pick it up, if it’s someone who found us out –”

“I don’t know,” Tommen says, “maybe it’s important? I mean, they must have used Shireen’s because all of ours are here, and that’s _Bran_ ’s – what if it’s your parents?”

“Like hell I’m falling for it. Don’t answer it!” Wylla sides with Dacey barely letting him finish.

“Guys, maybe –” Robb starts, and Wylla shakes her head.

“They’re right, what if this is a Lando situation?”

Then a voice comes out of the walkie-talkie, and it doesn’t sound too impressed with their bickering.

“Guys, it’s Arya, it’s not a _Lando_ situation, we know everything, the inspector wants to talk to you and _just fucking pick it up already_!”

“The hell –” Robb mutters, then he reaches forward and takes it. “Arya?” Jon thinks it’s his sister. He did mention her at some point.

“Robb, _finally_ , you don’t even – just keep that line open.” For a moment they hear nothing, and then someone else speaks – it’s a man. Definitely older than the whole lot of them.

“Thank you. Robb?”

“Uh, Inspector?”

So he’s with the police? Jon doesn’t like it much, but –

“Listen, we have no bloody time for this, but – we know what went on in that base, we have your friends’ files, your sisters were about to go _hunting zombies_ and find the girls on their own, more or less, Jaime Lannister has been _stalling_ things with at the base the military people since this afternoon and no one knows how he’s managing that and we need to know where you are and if both of those kids are with you. We’re – we’re not giving them up if that’s what you’re worried about and no one is about to pull a Lando Carlissian on you all, but either we all band up or we don’t get anywhere. Now, _where the hell are you_?”

“Wait a moment,” Robb says, and then he leaves the phone where it is and comes back to them.

“Guys, we need to decide quick. I think he’s clean, and Arya wouldn’t have called first if she didn’t trust him. Seaworth’s a decent guy and his vice is too, I think we should tell them.”

“Well, we are way out of our league,” Ygritte shrugs.

“If you’re sure he wasn’t lying, I guess it can’t hurt,” Dacey says.

“But what about you two?” Bran asks. “I mean. You should have a say.”

Jon shrugs. “If you trust them, tell them.”

Theon says nothing, but he gives Robb a nod and goes back to looking down at his hands. Robb nods and grabs the receiver again.

“The old Castamere manor,” he tells the inspector.

“ _What_? That place is about to fall apart!”

“Which is why one would think no one would look for us here, right?”

“Okay. Try to not let that place fall on your heads while we get there. We’ll be right there. _Don’t do anything stupid_ , all right?”

“I wish I could tell you for sure, but – yeah. All right.”

The line goes dead and Robb drops sitting on the ground a moment later. “Well, I guess we’ll save the explanations for when they get here. Just – do you think we can just – go there, grab the girls and come back that easily? Or is that a question for when the inspector and everyone else with him gets here and we have to explain them about the Others and where exactly the girls ended up?” he asks.

Theon gives Jon a look, then shrugs minutely. “It should wait,” he says.

Jon knows that they’re just stalling the inevitable moment, but – he spent years trying to imagine how the outside world would have been.

He thinks he likes it. And he has no hurry whatsoever to not enjoy it anymore, but –

But he will have to.

Won’t he?

\--

“Constable Payne, could you please explain what you were doing in the armory along with three unarmed underage _civilians_ stashing guns away?”

For a moment, Arya feels really bad about their stunt. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen Davos Seaworth _that_ angry in her entire life – scratch, she didn’t think the guy could get angry, and poor Pod got roped into helping them because they pushed.

“Listen, it was our fault,” she says before this can get worse. “We were – looking into things, and he ran into us, and – oh, for – listen, Inspector, I know this sounds crazy but Jeyne and the others, they’re – they’re in some kind of alternate dimension full of _zombies_ , okay? And I didn’t think you were going to believe us even if we had proof, so what were we supposed to do?”

She grabs her jeans and pulls them upwards so she can show the Inspector the state of her ankle – you can still see the handprint etched on her skin.

Gendry is looking everywhere but at his uncle, Sansa is staring ahead as if she’s itching to just grab one of those guns and run, and the last thing she expects is Sergeant Tarth to look up at the sky and raise her hands up in defeat.

“Well, I guess that at this point it makes bloody sense that the missing part of the puzzles would be the zombies,” she says.

“… Missing part of the puzzle?” Sansa asks. “Is there something _freakier_ going on?”

Stannis, the sergeant and the inspector all look at each other for what seems like a long, long moment.

“How do we tell them?” the sergeant asks, and she sounds like she wants to start laughing uncontrollably so that she doesn’t cry instead.

“I think,” Stannis says slowly, “that sticking to facts might be the best course of action. Since they are talking about _hunting zombies_ and all.”

Davos takes a very deep breath. “Right. Guess that as the person technically in charge it’s on me. We didn’t know _where_ your friends ended up, and we had no clue about the, uh, zombies, but wherever it is, they could get in because people in the military were doing crazy experiments on humans so that they could – uh – communicate with other dimensions. I guess. This sounds like one of those third-rate movies I’d watch when I was fucking thirteen. _However_. The _subjects_ of those crazy experiments ran away the same day Shireen and Myrcella disappeared, they’ve been experimented on for their entire lives and by the way, Arya, Sansa? There’s a very likely chance that one of them is actually your bloody cousin. And we have no clue where the hell they’re hiding. The end.”

“Our _cousin_?” Arya can’t help blurting out. “But Uncle Brandon’s in London and he said he’d never have children and Uncle Benjen’s not even in the country for the next five years and we’d know if –”

“Arya,” Sansa interrupts her, “I think they mean… Aunt Lyanna? But – Dad always said she died and had a stillborn baby, it’s –”

Stannis opens a thick folder he had been holding and hands them one page with a picture attached in the left upper corner – Arya doesn’t want to know what all the _classified_ stamped on the rest of the file mean. She just looks at the picture. And –

Gendry clears his throat. “Well, never mind the hair, you have the exact same face,” he says.

“He’s right,” Sansa confirms. “He – he looks a bit like Dad. So –”

“We have no clue where they might be,” Brienne sighs. “And Jaime Lannister is currently _at the base_ trying to stall the military, which isn’t going to last for long if I pegged these people right, and we need to know where your brother and everyone else is –”

The phone rings and Alysane Mormont takes the call.

“Boss!”

“Alysane, this is a matter of life and death, if it’s some kind of menial argument or _whatever_ –”

“Actually,” she says, “it’s my uncle.”

“Who, the PE teacher? What’s the matter?”

“I didn’t quite grasp _everything,_ but apparently Robb Stark, his brother and their friends, as he put it, showed up at school today with two other people no one knew and somehow the science lab got destroyed. Then they all disappeared into thin air and now his entire football team – the one made of people he mostly hates, admittedly – has come back raving about one of the two unknowns having killed someone back at the lake and they were all throwing up as they spoke.”

“Wait a moment,” Arya says, “if they showed up with – _did they hide two people in the basement without anyone noticing_?”

“I guess they were stealthy about it,” Sansa says. “Then again, I barely – I barely even noticed,” she sighs. “I wouldn’t have if I didn’t care.”

“What I’m wondering is how they didn’t figure out that you and this other poor kid look like long lost siblings,” Stannis says.

“Robb and Bran are _shitty_ with that kinda thing,” Arya shrugs. “Also if you see someone every day maybe – it just doesn’t stand out? Anyway, I guess we’re all set now, aren’t we?”

“How are we set exactly?” Pod asks meekly. He looks relieved that his job doesn’t seem to be threatened, for the current moment.

“We know they are with Robb and the others. We know where Jeyne and the other girls are. We just have to find the kids and then we can plan and go get the girls already?”

“I don’t think they particularly want to be found, since they _disappeared into thin air_ ,” Sansa sighs as Davos chatters away on the phone, then sends Constable Saan to check that situation out and comes back to their small group.

“Sadly he couldn’t give out any more information, but the situation in the science lab seemed… well, similar to what we read of Theon Greyjoy’s file,” he says. To Arya it means nothing, but Stannis’s teeth start gritting a moment later.

“Do we want to know?” Gendry asks.

“Probably not,” Brienne answers. “Girls, please tell me that you know some way you can try and get in contact with your brothers or with one of them, because without them we can’t do zilch and – I don’t even want to know what’s going on at the base now.”

“Lannister can take care of himself,” Stannis says, but he doesn’t sound that sure about it. Brienne sends him a look that makes Arya think she knows something they don’t, but then she just shrugs and looks at the file in her hands.

“He can, but against people who have absolutely no scruples kidnapping children from their families and labeling them _faulty_ when they can’t kill someone precisely if you point them in the right direction? I’m a bit skeptical here. If I may.”

“They might have the walkie-talkies,” Arya says, desperately trying to change the subject. “I mean, Bran and his friends got them for Christmas. Those things have a good range and I doubt they’d leave without at least one of them.”

“The – when did they get them?” Sansa obviously doesn’t remember that. But she wouldn’t.

“This Christmas,” Arya sighs. “You were at that – thing with the school’s ballet group when we exchanged presents.” She went because the people she was hoping to be friends with would all be there, Arya doesn’t remind her, and Sansa bites down on her lip but says nothing.

“I didn’t even – never mind. Fine. Let’s go home and get Bran’s, maybe he left them there.”

“Sansa,” Pod starts, “I don’t think – at this point the military will know that those two poor guys are with your brothers. Or something. Where do you think are they going to check first?”

_At our place_ , Arya completes in her head.

Damn it.

“Shireen had one,” Stannis says. “ _That_ one has to be home. And they won’t go and check there, I think.”

“Right,” Davos says. “Good call. Let’s all go. No suicide missions where you all go off on your own shooting zombies. How the hell did you manage to get that ankle almost mauled?”

“I kicked the zombie in question,” Arya replies, shrugging.

“You can tell that to Mom and Dad when this is over, I’m sure they’ll see how sending you to martial arts training paid off,” Sansa says, but it doesn’t sound mocking as it might have a few months ago.

“Yeah, if they don’t ground us for the next ten years.”

That is also a problem, but they’ll cross that bridge when they get to it, she decides. She doesn’t know how they all manage to pile up into the only service car and it’s a ride she’d rather forget as soon as possible, but they’re at Stannis’s not long later. Gendry says he’ll go find the thing, he knows where Shireen kept it, and comes back with the walkie-talkie moments later. Arya thinks that the shattered lamps scattered in the living room are freaky, but she doesn’t voice that out loud – there’s already enough crazy to go on here without adding that to the mix.

She tells Gendry to hand it over – she used Bran’s a couple of times when it wouldn’t work right and he asked her to help him with it, she thinks she remembers how it works.

She turns it on and for a moment she hears static. Then –

“ – don’t answer it!”

“Guys, maybe –” That definitely was Robb.

“ – what if it’s a Lando situation?”

Arya rolls her eyes – that was definitely Wylla Manderly and she’ll never understand why or how her siblings and their friends are so much into Star Wars when Star Trek is way cooler.

“Guys, it’s Arya, it’s not a _Lando_ situation, we know everything, the inspector wants to talk to you and _just fucking pick it up already_!”

“The hell –” Someone picks up the walkie-talkie on the other side, finally. “Arya?”

“Robb, _finally_ , you don’t even – just keep that line open.” She hands Seaworth the talkie and he takes it with a nod.

“Thank you. Robb?”

“Uh, Inspector?”

“Listen, we have no bloody time for this, but – we know what went on in that base, we have your friends’ files, your sisters were about to go _hunting zombies_ and find the girls on their own, more or less, Jaime Lannister has been _stalling_ things with at the base the military people since this afternoon and no one knows how he’s managing that and we need to know where you are and if both of those kids are with you. We’re – we’re not giving them up if that’s what you’re worried about and no one is about to pull a Lando Carlissian on you all, but either we all band up or we don’t get anywhere. Now, _where the hell are you_?”

For a moment Robb says nothing. Then –

“Wait a moment.”

They can hear some thirty seconds of chattering, and then Robb picks the call back up.

“The old Castamere manor.”

“ _What_? That place is about to fall apart!”

“Which is why one would think no one would look for us here, right?”

“Okay. Try to not let that place fall on your heads while we get there. We’ll be right there. _Don’t do anything stupid_ , all right?”

“I wish I could tell you for sure, but – yeah. All right.”

The line goes dead at that.

“Why didn’t you tell them –” Brienne asks.

“I don’t think that’s how you want to find out that you’ve made friends with your cousin without knowing,” Davos says. “Right. Let’s go. If I’m not getting a heart attack during the next twelve hours I’m counting it as a win.”

When Arya thought that she lived in a small horrid little town where nothing was exciting and wished for something more lively, she hadn’t ever imagined she’d end up in a packed police car where no one can ride in the trunk because it’s packed with guns so they can go kill zombies and rescue people in _another dimension_.

On paper, it sounds cool. In reality – not so much.

Never mind that in order to get in the car, Brienne is driving, Davos is sitting in the passenger seat with most bags and what weapons couldn’t go into the trunk on his legs and everyone else is in the back, which means that when Stannis tells Gendry that he’s sorry about not having even realized he was out trying to kill zombies on his own because he was too busy worrying about Shireen apparently talking to him somehow, she hears it.

Gendry replies that he gets it and he didn’t mind it, and Arya doesn’t know what possesses her to put a hand over the guy’s arm, but hey, given how close they have to be, she can pass it as something she did trying to get a better position, or at least that’s what she tells herself.

What she _knows_ is that the moment she sees Robb and Bran she’ll give them the hide of their life for not having told her what they were up to in the first place.

\-- 

Ygritte does _not_ like how for the next twenty minutes or so after the inspector’s call, no one touches the hot topic at hand. Jon is twitchy as fuck, Theon looks way gloomier than he had when he came in with Robb, there’s definitely something they’re not sharing with the class and even if it seems like both she and Robb have schooled them well since they showed them the entire Star Wars trilogy, they don’t seem to be grasping the concept of _having a favorite character_. Good thing at least it’s entertaining the younger part of their small party.

“But why should I like a character better than another?” Jon asks, sounding absolutely baffled. “I mean, there’s – no point to it?”

“It doesn’t have to _have a point_ ,” Bran presses. “It’s just because. I mean, you liked those clothes better than others or you wouldn’t have put them on, right?”

“Well, yes?”

“It’s the same! You like one character better just because.”

“Then why is that so important?”

“Just – because it is!”

Jon _still_ doesn’t seem convinced. “It’s just a thing you do for fun,” Ygritte says, taking pity on him. “Really, there’s no secret point to it. I mean, I told you my favorite was Leia, didn’t I?”

“You did?”

“Well, that’s about it. _Everyone_ has a favorite character. Generally.”

He still doesn’t look too convinced, though maybe a bit more so than before. “And – then you argue about it?” Jon still doesn’t seem entirely on board with the concept.

“Man, you don’t want to know,” Wylla says. “Try telling these losers that Vader is _the coolest_.”

“Wylla, _no_ , Obi-Wan is the coolest,” Bran declares.

“How can you say that when _Chewbacca_ is in those films?” Tommen doesn’t sound like he finds those choices that hot, either.

“I can’t believe there’s dark side fans in here. I’m disappointed, Manderly,” Dacey says. “Leia is still the coolest.”

Ygritte high-fives her without even looking – she also is Myrcella and Shireen’s favorite, and it was _nice_ to always outnumber the guys at least on that.

If only they could do it again, she thinks wistfully.

“Meanwhile,” Dacey goes on, “Robb here is _for once_ not entirely predictable.”

“Oh, shut it,” he replies. “Han is a _perfectly valid_ choice, okay?”

“Yeah, you have a thing for _scoundrels_ ,” Ygritte says, hoping it might lift up the mood.

“No, because I definitely don’t have a thing for _you_ ,” Robb replies. “Sorry, I guess this wasn’t any less confusing, but – well. It’s fun. That’s about it. So, did you actually have a favorite or no?”

Jon looks at her, then at the ground. He seems to actually consider it.

No one probably expects Theon to speak first, but –

“Luke?” He says, almost posing it as a question. “I mean. I guess it’s Luke.”

Before anyone can ask the obvious question that Ygritte thinks _everyone_ was about to ask – _really? Because I wouldn’t have bet on that_ – the door opens and the conversation dies there.

“Oh, _there_ you are.” That is definitely the inspector.

They’re so all fucked, when this is over.

“Careful,” someone who sounds like Stannis Baratheon mutters, “this floor is rotten. There they are, indeed.”

“Robb, Bran, _damn it_ ,” Arya Stark says, bypassing the men and running towards their group, “you could have said!”

“Yeah,” Robb says, standing up, “what, hey, guys, we happened to find two people on the run in the woods who can do superhero-like stuff, can we please hide them in the basement? And _Sansa_ , what the hell are you doing here?”

“Jeyne’s there because of me,” Sansa says. “They found stuff out and warned me and – I had to come, all right?”

Ygritte stands up along with everyone else – the entire crowd is Seaworth, Baratheon, Brienne Tarth, Robb’s sisters, Gendry Waters and Podrick Payne. She doesn’t want to know how they all fit in the car.

Then she actually takes a good look at Arya Stark.

It’s not that they see each other very often, Arya hangs out more with Bran and his friends than Robb’s and therefore Ygritte herself, but now that she’s taking a very good look at her…

Oh, _no_ , she thinks, turning back and looking at Jon.

“Guys, we don’t have much time here. Now, you two,” Seaworth says, eyeing Jon and Theon. “I suppose you’re – the ones who escaped from the base, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” Jon blurts out.

“Please _don’t_ ,” Seaworth says, “I don’t need anyone to remind me how old I’m getting. Right. Let me guess, he’s – Theon and you’re… One?”

Jon _flinches_. “I – I’d prefer Jon? If –”

“ _Absolutely_.” The inspector at least sounded like he couldn’t wait to actually use a proper name. “Now, let me tell you first that – well. We found your files.”

“How?” the two of them ask that at the same time and then give each other a weird look, as if they hadn’t been expecting it.

Seaworth breathes in. “That’s the first problem. Brienne here broke into the base with Jaime Lannister. Who is not present – because he stayed there to buy her time. And has been there ever since. Which is why we think we should _really_ move on and come up with a plan.”

“Uncle Jaime did _what_?”

Ygritte doesn’t miss Brienne’s slight flinch as Tommen asks that question – she goes and moves next to him, kneeling down to his level. “He stayed behind so I could get away,” she says, “but I promised him I’d get him back and _we will_. I’m sure he too stubborn to let anyone kill him in three hours, for that matter.”

Tommen does laugh a bit at that, bless. “Yeah, he wouldn’t, but – I just –”

“Don’t worry, I’m sure he’s okay,” she says, and – Ygritte has to give it to her. She does sound like she entirely, fully believes it.

“That’s one problem,” Seaworth says, “but we have another. Well, I don’t know if it’s a _problem_ , but – Robb, Bran, for the love of everything, how _bad_ are you with faces?”

“Sorry?” Bran asks.

Oh, _damn it_. Ygritte can’t really believe that –

“Stannis had to notice it. Jon, can you _please_ go stand next to Arya over there?”

“… All right?” Jon does, and a moment later Ygritte thinks that everyone has noticed what she did.

“No way,” Bran breathes out.

“Ah, I _thought_ there was something familiar,” Robb whispers. “But – how –”

“Aunt Lyanna,” Sansa says. “Or at least, that’s what we figured out.”

“What – what does this mean?” Jon sounds like he’s about to faint.

Everyone else looks either too shocked or fishing for words, and Ygritte knows enough about Robb’s aunt to put the rest of it together.

“It means that you and Arya over there look more alike than she and _her siblings_ do. Given that the aunt Sansa just mentioned apparently _died in childbirth_ some fifteen years ago and everyone thought the baby didn’t survive it either until now, I guess she might have been your mother from what it looks like. Which still makes you a real life Luke Skywalker.”

“… That was it,” Seaworth confirms, and –

Ygritte honestly hadn’t known what to expect.

Sure as hell not Jon glancing at Arya, then at Robb and Bran, and then _bursting out in tears_.

Says everything that Robb has an arm around his shoulders a moment later, same as Arya and Bran – Theon is a bit on the side, but he also looks like he knows what’s going on.

“Hey, it’s – we didn’t expect it, but – it’s great news, actually?” Bran sounds _excited_ , bless him. “We can just go home and tell our parents and maybe –”

“No,” Jon sobs, “no you can’t.”

“But why?” Arya sounds like she has had at least some time to come to terms with the idea. “I mean, they wouldn’t expect it, but they wouldn’t say no –”

“It’s not that.” He sounds _devastated_ now. “It’s – I had to keep the portal open. Or to open it at will. But I also had to – to control _them_. In theory. I mean, the Others.”

Ygritte doesn’t like where this is going.

“And – back when I ran, it was because I understood it was becoming too dangerous, but – in order to _make contact_ with them and control them, sort of, I should –” He stops, shaking his head. “They made me –” He stops again, and then Theon clears his throat when no one was expecting him to.

“There’s one of them who’s – more powerful than the others,” he says. “In order to control them, you have to control _him_. They tried to get me to – to read his mind or _something_ when I was seven and I ended up killing three guards and almost dying while it happened,” he goes on. Since _when_ does he talk this much? “Jon could handle it better, but it goes both ways and he can’t control that thing. Nor the others. And – killing it requires – a lot of effort. And he’s the only one who can, since he was the one making contact.”

“He’s right,” Jon says, sounding thankful that he didn’t have to say that specific bit. “It’s – it would be a miracle if it didn’t kill me.”

“And you _knew_?” Ygritte can’t help blurting out.

“I did, I just – didn’t want to say it until I could avoid it,” he says, wiping at his eyes. “But – well. I don’t really think you should introduce me to anyone if I’m dying before tomorrow morning.”

Ygritte chances a look at everyone else in the room – there isn’t one face that isn’t absolutely horrified at the prospect. Except Theon’s, but he’d have known.

Then –

“That’s fucking stupid,” Arya blurts out. “And how fatalist is that? For – you can’t know you’re going to die for sure. And I don’t even know you but if we’re _related_ I think I’d like to have the bloody chance?”

“Flattered,” Jon says, still wiping at his eyes, “but there’s no way –”

“There is,” Theon interrupts again. He’s –

He’s _smirking_?

It’s not a happy smirk or smile by any means, but at least it’s not the blank expression he had three days ago.

“How?” Robb asks.

Theon breathes in. “He opens a portal or brings us to one. Whoever wants to go in and find – the people you’re missing, you can go. You should probably be fast, because the moment – the thing he’s in contact with senses him, he’s going to come straight there. Then again, there is a permanently opened one in the base – at most, use that way out. When the moment comes, O – _Jon_ should kill it, but if I’m sharing the load, maybe it won’t be too much for him to handle. I thought I couldn’t,” he says, sounding exhausted. “But I found out I can. So. Maybe I can again. I don’t _know_ , but we could try it. At worst, we both die trying but it can’t be worse than – where we came from.”

“You would do that?” Jon asks. “Theon, if it goes wrong for _you_ –”

“I know. But – it didn’t before. And – maybe it won’t again.”

“Am I seriously seeing you two saying you’re about to go on a suicide mission for the sake of people you don’t even know?”

Seaworth sounds like he’s about to cry. Jon shrugs. “I know, uh, our friends here. And I felt – I felt horrible about opening the portal in the first place. Just – if we both survive –”

“Kid, they’d have to walk over my dead body before I hand you over to a military scientist. Both of you. I’ve seen enough of your bloody files. So, can you really send us straight there?”

Jon takes a moment to consider it, then –

“Yes. It’s – you have to look for the ravens.”

“ _What_?”

“To get out. There’s always a raven or two flying near one of the portals.”

“Why would birds even get near that?”

“No idea. It’s – not our world,” Jon replies.

“Davos, he obviously knows better than us. Fine. Ravens it is,” Stannis says after having observed the entire scene without saying a thing for this long.

“There’ll be just one pathway to go back,” Jon keeps on. “And you’ll come out in the base.”

“Good. Because we need to find out about Jaime,” Brienne declares. “Are we doing it now?”

“We can do it now,” Jon agrees. “Just – decide who goes and who remains here, and try to stay together.”

At _that_ , obviously chaos erupts – of course Robb doesn’t want Arya to go in at all, regardless of how much Arya brags that she took care of herself once and she can do it again. Sansa won’t be swayed, the kids all want to go but don’t protest too much when Seaworth puts his foot down, Robb lets them deal with it while he goes to tell Theon something and –

Ygritte can’t help looking at Jon and thinking, _fuck’s sake, he’s barely sixteen if he’s even that old, he knew he might have to die and he was still going to do it to save our collective arses, he didn’t understand the point of having a favorite character in a movie, if he dies now he’ll have spent exactly three days in the real world. Never mind that he thought his parents left him with those psychopaths, which maybe would make the prospect of sacrificing yourself for the greater good somewhat better, and instead he’s doing it anyway when he’s probably found his fucking family. And – and he’s still kind of really cute and if this goes pear-shaped he’ll die without having kissed a girl or fooled around with one or done anything people his age have done way before they turn fucking sixteen._

She’s about to say something when Seaworth starts dividing people in groups and Jon actually moves closer to her – he looks straight at her, then obviously swallows and he looks… kind of nervous?

“I – I guess I should tell you something. Before – before you go, I mean. The inspector said you should go with them.”

“Good, someone has some brains here,” Ygritte jokes, albeit very weakly.

“Well. I – I actually had a favorite character. I think.”

“Then you should really fucking tell me already,” she says, and why does she want to cry? “If it’s not Luke I’ll be disappointed.”

“No,” Jon says. “No, it’s – I think it was Han. And it’s not that he’s like me, I don’t care for that, but – it’s that he reminded me of _you_.”

For a moment, she’s too fucking speechless to say something. And it’s not that he told her she’s like the _coolest_ person in Star Wars except for Leia, it’s that –

He just said Han was his favorite _because_ she’s like him. Apparently. And –

She doesn’t even think before she puts a hand on the back of his neck.

“Jon,” she says, “now you listen to me. I’ve never, once in my fucking life, set foot at the school prom.”

“What –”

“It’s a dumb dance where people dress up and dance badly and get drunk at the end of the year. This sorry place has one for each grade because it’s _that_ boring and people need to have fun somehow. I’ve had a few people ask me to go with them and I laughed in their face. I honestly thought I’d never attend one and I was fine with it. But now –” She breathes in and just goes for it. “If you think you _aren’t_ coming back alive from this and that you aren’t coming with me next May when they hold it, you know nothing. _Clear_?”

And then, just to make sure the point is unmistakable, she moves forward and presses a kiss on the corner of his mouth if only because she’d feel like shit if this was his first kiss and he didn’t even see it coming.

She _doesn’t_ expect him to turn slightly and actually kiss her for real even if his technique is nonexistent and it’s obvious he barely even knows how it’s supposed to go.

She kisses back as much as the situation allows and she doesn’t try to stop a couple of tears from falling down her cheeks as she moves back.

“That was a fucking sorry kiss,” she says, “but next time I can show you better than that. So, are we clear?”

“We are,” Jon says, sounding tentatively – excited about it?

“Good. Then don’t get yourself fucking killed. Inspector, _I’m coming_.”

Right, she notices as she looks at her party – apparently she’s going to fight zombies along with the inspector himself, Stannis Baratehon, Dacey, Brienne Tarth, Sansa, Pod and Gendry. Everyone else is staying here, but – it’s a division that makes some sort of sense. After all, they have two people with fucking superpowers, don’t they?

Jon closes his eyes for a moment and then – a round grey hole suddenly appears on the ground in front of them, and then it gets bigger and darker, and darker until it’s pitch-black and something like mist starts rising out of it.

“Right,” he says, “jump in. And look for the ravens. They’re going to lead you either here or to the base.”

“If you had told me _three months_ ago that I’d go travel in another bloody dimension,” Davos sighs, but then he goes first and disappears into the black void. Everyone else does, until Ygritte is the only one left. She turns to look at Jon, and –

“Good. And remember that we have a fucking date,” she says as she moves on the edge of the hole.

“I know,” Jon says, smirking ever so slightly, and then she lets herself fall down.

She’s floating through something dark and wet and cold when she realizes _how he answered that bloody statement about the date._

_I know._

Damn him, damn -, he wasn’t allowed to spring that on her just like that.

But then, she’s out in some dark woods with air so cold she can’t help shuddering the moment she sets her feet on the ground, and she can’t ponder that anymore.

Not for now, anyway.

Everyone else is down here, and none of them looks excited about it.

“You go on looking for the girls,” Brienne says, speaking first. “I’ll look for some birds.”

“Wait –” Stannis starts, but she shakes her head.

“I know I’d be an asset, but I promised J – Lannister that I’d go back and get him out. He’s been there too long,” she sighs, and –

Right, Ygritte thinks, _that_ would be a priority.

She hopes that wherever he is, Lannister isn’t having it as bad as they are.

\--

My father’s attic never was this damp, _Jaime thinks as his hands skim over the rotten wood on the floor. For that matter, it never was this dark and it never felt this small._

_Never mind that he hasn’t set foot in it since he left home, and that was years ago, all right._

Why am I dreaming about my father’s bloody attic?, _he thinks as he stands up. There isn’t a muscle in his body that’s not aching, and he feels like someone just punched the living daylights out of him – great. Just great._

_A lot of things are feeling downright wrong. Starting from the fact that his father would never let the attic rot or live in a house in less than spotless conditions. He heads for the light switch, if it’s where he remembers. He turns it on and a moment later a lone lamp turns on._

_Then the light starts flickering on and off._

_Jaime doesn’t even want to try and see if it’s Morse code, it’s too fast for him to keep track of it, and looks at the rest of room instead. There are the bookshelves that Tyrion used to load so much it looked like they might fall off – the books are also damp and the metal is rusty. Jaime remembers the times when he’d come up here to find his brother reading, he always was in the damned attic. Not that he didn’t have any reasons. Same as he had all the reasons to pack his bags and move to France years ago._

_“Took you long enough to show up.”_

_The worn-out copy of Lord of the Rings he had in his hand crashes to the ground as he turns towards Cersei – she’s standing in front of the door, looking exactly like the day of the last custody hearing. That day, he thought her eyes were the coldest green he ever saw in his life and now they’re the exact same shade._

_“I’m not really_ here _,” he replies. He sounds as tired as he feels. “And you aren’t real.”_

_“If you say so,” she replies, her mouth drawn in a thin line. “So, this is how you take care of my children?”_

_“Our children.” He already had this conversation in real life once. Having it again won’t be what kills him._

_“As if. One is probably dead and you’ve barely seen the other since she disappeared. So much for wanting to do right by them. And they still don’t even_ know. _It would be amusing if it wasn’t pathetic.”_

_“You don’t know that.”_ As if. _“You barely even noticed they existed anyway along with Robert, or have you forgotten that? I’m trying.”_

_“Keep telling yourself that.”_

_Then she shakes her head and takes a step back, towards the darkest corner of the room._

_“Cersei, what - wait!”_

_“You’re on your own,” she whispers, and then she’s gone, same as she was back in the day. As if._

I loved you once, _he doesn’t reply. There’d be no point. He heads towards the door, figuring that he’ll just leave and see if he can force himself to wake the fuck up already, and –_

_And there’s no lock on it._

_“What the fuck,” he says. He tries to push against the door. It’s locked and doesn’t even budge._

_Christ, what is this? “I need to get out,” he mutters. “Shit, I need to get out, I can’t be here, I can’t –”_

_“Maybe that’s not the way out.”_

_He jerks to his left – what is Brienne doing here?_

_For a moment he’s about to ask her before remembering that he’s most probably fucking dreaming this, and then he notices that she’s not wearing her usual police uniform, which is the only thing he’s ever seen her in._

_She’s wearing regular jeans, a pale blue blouse with a few flowers embroidered discreetly along the hems and she has bare feet, but the floor isn’t creaking. He doesn’t know what it is about her that makes her look almost pretty in that flickering light, given that her crooked nose hasn’t become straight, her mouth hasn’t become thinner, her hair hasn’t become gold blonde instead of pale straw and exactly nothing has changed about her appearance, but – something is just making her look somehow different._

_“What, you happen to know it?” he asks._

_She nods towards the window leading straight to the roof._

_“Yeah, that’s too high.”_

_“Not if you climb,” she shrugs, kneeling down._

_Oh._

_He doesn’t even think about it before this starts to become too bizarre even for a dream and he climbs up on her shoulders, reaching for the window’s handle._

_It opens._

_The air outside it is so cold he shudders and almost loses his balance, but Brienne’s hands are keeping his legs still and so he doesn’t as she stands up and hoists him out of the window. He climbs out into a snowstorm, and then looks down at her. He’s about to lean down and offer her a hand but then she shakes her head._

_“No. You have to go.”_

_“But –”_

_“You have to go, Jaime. Now.”_

_The window suddenly closes itself in Jaime’s face, and when he looks towards the edge of the roof, everything is dark._

_But maybe –_

_Maybe that is the way out?_

_He breathes in and he jumps downwards and –_

“Fuck!”

His eyes jerk open and he comes back to consciousness as a fist collides with his stomach, and now he remembers everyfuckingthing.

As in, of course he passed out.

They beat the shit out of him when they found him in that bathroom and he wouldn’t tell them a thing.

“Took you some time to come back to the land of the living, Mr. Lannister,” Roose Bolton says from somewhere above his head – Jaime raises it enough to look him in the eyes. Shit, the entire left side of his face hurts. ‘Course it would. He feels like spitting teeth.

“To be honest, I was having a pretty nice dream. Too bad you had to wake me up.” It probably didn’t sound as flippant as he wishes it did, but never mind that – as long as he pisses the guy off and he keeps his attention on himself, all gained.

“Yes, and I have a feeling that you are purposefully being, how should I put it, a nuisance so that I think you’re the only one going after me. Care to confirm or deny it?”

Shit. Why is the military made of completely dumb people you can play like a fiddle just in movies?

“ _General_ , I have sound reasons to think my niece disappeared into thin air because of you. Or well, because of whatever it is that you’re doing in here. Since you wouldn’t cooperate and sadly my all too powerful friends can’t be reached in a short amount of time, I thought I’d look for her myself.”

“And have you found her?”

“No,” he admits, “but no one keeps teenager-sized scrubs in a locker along with enough meds for an entire squadron of veterans with diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder for fun.”

“How interesting. There were a couple of files in that locker. Which disappeared.”

“Really? Too bad. I wouldn’t know where they ended up.”

The soldier on his left grabs the back of his chair and punches him in the right side – shit, he almost does throw up at that. He would have, if he’d had anything to eat.

Sure as hell he spits blood on the ground. Damn it.

“Or maybe someone else was with you and they brought the files outside.”

“That’s – an interesting conjecture,” Jaime spits as he sits back up. “Too bad I won’t be the one confirming it. I could have thrown them out of the window.”

“We’d have found them. _Who has the files_?”

_I’ll come back_ , Brienne had said before Jaime dropped that bomb on her and closed the window.

“No idea. Sorry about that.”

“Mr. Lannister, people who act like you are right now, they don’t show too much of what I call self-preservation instinct.”

“Well, damn. And here I was, convinced that there are not many _people like me_ around.”

They stare at each other for so long Jaime thinks his eyes might start to hurt, but like hell he’s going to relent.

But then – Bolton smirks. And Jaime honestly thinks he liked it better when he was just looking nonplussed, because that was downright cold.

“I think I shall test it, then.”

“Test it?”

“Please, do untie him. And let’s bring him to HQ. Don’t let him have too much freedom of movement, though.”

_Not that I could escape_ , Jaime doesn’t say, and lets himself get dragged through a few corridors. Then they drag him upstairs, then through another round of corridors – at this point he gives up on trying to commit the way out to memory – up until they get in front of a room with a keypad next to it, same as the one he and Brienne broke into before.

Bolton types a combination on the keyboard and the doors open.

“Do let Mr. Lannister in. We shall see how dedicated he is to finding his _niece_.”

The way he said that word, Jaime has a feeling he suspects that it’s not the truth. But it won’t be him confirming it.

The soldier lets him go and then goes back to close the door. Bolton motions for him to move closer and Jaime goes with – he barely has a choice, has he?

Bolton is standing next to some kind of rail – Jaime moves up next to him and looks down, and –

“What the fuck is _that_?”

He doesn’t even know how he should call what he’s seeing. There’s a five or six meters fall in between him and a round black circle which is definitely not just painted on the damned ground. It’s – it’s like looking at a curtain of pitch-black fog and if he leans over the rail, the air becomes suddenly colder.

“ _That_ , Mr. Lannister, is one way we could possibly not ever need to win wars anymore because no one would be so stupid to try and fight us. Of course, nothing can be achieved without some sacrifices, and we still have not found a way to keep that fully in check, but your niece, if she really is, because from the way you talk about her one would assume she’s your _daughter_ … well, if she’s still alive, she’s on the other side of that veil. I think we can call that a veil, indeed. That way is always open, others are occasionally and – sadly – by accident. That’s how it happened. However, if you care about her _that_ much, I suppose I can let you go get her. Of course, remembering the way out is up to you. If you can find the way out.”

Thing is – Jaime can read what he’s saying between the lines. _I’m letting you do it because I know you won’t come back. Or I think it’s very likely that you won’t_.

Still – if he stays here, he has a feeling he won’t last long. If he goes, he has a chance in hell of finding his daughter and Shireen Baratheon (if they aren’t dead yet, but given how that light flickered in his dream, _maybe not_ ), and –

_I’ll come back_.

It’s probably insane that he’s stacking his survival chances on Brienne promising that she’d come back to get his ass out, and he hasn’t stacked his survival chances on _anyone_ since he realized his sister wasn’t the person he thought he was in love with, but –

“You want your _daughter_ , Lannister?” Bolton asks again. “Fine. Go get her.”

What the hell, he just fucking might, and so he _does_.

“With pleasure,” he says, and puts a hand on the rail before climbing on the other side. For a moment, he holds on to it.

Then he takes a deep breath of biting cold air and jumps into the void.


	7. be true, be brave, stand

“Shit,” Davos says, shuddering openly, “sure as hell I should’ve brought a heavier coat.”

“Then let’s try to get the hell out of here as soon as we can.” That Ygritte might be entirely too blunt, Stannis thinks, but she has a lot of common sense to her. He can appreciate it.

“She’s right,” Pod says, “but – I think – I mean, no disrespect, but – if we all go together, and the girls aren’t, uh, together, we’re _never_ going to get out of here.”

“Payne also has a point,” Stannis has to admit. “In theory we _do_ know how to get out, but still –”

That’s when three things happen at once.

First, someone screams in the distance, and it’s definitely a girl, and it’s definitely _not_ Shireen.

Second, a loud crash as if some kind of tree just fell down comes from somewhere _behind_ them.

Third, what looks like a storm of fireflies suddenly appears on their right and for a second the small clearing they’re in is actually filled with light, and then the fireflies rush forward in the same direction.

“That was Jeyne,” Sansa says, “I’m sure that was Jeyne, I have to go –”

“You aren’t going _anywhere_ on your own,” Davos says, stopping her from lunging forward.

Then Jeyne (if it’s indeed her), screams again in the distance.

“Okay. If it’s just her –” Davos seems to think about it for a moment. “Fuck me, I hope this doesn’t bite us in the arse. Pod, Ygritte, Dacey, you go with her. Four of you can probably get her out of whatever she’s in. Then when you get her look for the birds and get the fuck out unless you hear us. Go.”

Sansa doesn’t have to be told twice – she rushes forward with the other three following close behind.

“I just hope I haven’t sent a bunch of kids to die,” Davos says. “Okay. Stannis, you said your daughter used lights to communicate with you?”

“She did. You think that –”

“I think you should follow those fireflies and I think I should go with you because you haven’t used a gun in years as far as I know. Brienne, you think you can handle whatever was going on at the base?”

“I will,” she says, nodding. “I can take care of myself, we’ll – we’ll see each other out.”

“I hope so.”

Brienne disappears into the woods, going towards the direction they’re turning their backs to, and then Davos gives him a nod.

“Fine. Let’s go and let’s try to be as quiet as possible. Then people ask me why I think Tory bullshit about needing to be supportive of our armed forces should be eradicated. Who even thinks messing with _this_ is a good idea?”

“Someone who should be fired at once,” Stannis agrees immediately. He never quite shared Davos’ radical opinions about certain issues even if it hasn’t prevented them from being friendly for years, but right now he thinks Davos is entirely in the right. He’s feeling so cold his teeth are not chattering just out of pure force of will, and the only thing that isn’t making him feel completely lost is the light of those fireflies showing up once in a while and always in the distance. At least it’s the right direction.

Meanwhile, the ground is covered in snow so hard it could as well be ice already, the trees are so thick he can barely see beyond what little moonlight there is allows them to and breathing hurts.

He reaches out, touches one of the trees and has to bite down on his tongue the moment he does – the wood is so sharp it slashed his palm.

“Good grief,” he hisses, clutching it, “this isn’t normal.”

“What – and that was because you touched _a tree_?”

“I hope you’re not stupid enough to follow my example.”

“Like hell. Right. Over there.”

Until now they’ve always gone straight but now the flickering lights are to their left. He grabs a packet of tissues he had in his jacket – he always makes sure he has one on him. _Look at how useful that turned out to be_ , he thinks bitterly as he wraps the wound up.

He hears Davos take off the gun’s safety. He doesn’t tell him not to.

They walk straight ahead, but then –

Then the fireflies aren’t to be seen anymore.

That’s when it starts to hail.

“Fuck,” Davos says, “this isn’t going too well. What –”

“Wait.” If what he saw is right –

He goes towards the nearest tree, checking if the light hasn’t betrayed him, but –

There’s a small arrow painted in blood on the bark and it’s pointing right.

“Here,” Stannis says. “I don’t think we have many other options.”

Davos nods and follows him – this path goes deeper into the woods, of course, and the trees are getting thicker, and that wood isn’t getting any less sharp. At some point the branches cut the back of his hand and Davos’s cheeks – his beard gets stained in red at some point, but he just wipes it out and moves forward, until –

“Did Shireen wear a white dress that day?”

“Yes. Why?”

Davos holds up a piece of white cloth that had been on one branch on his side of the path.

They turn over there, and not long later he finds another piece of that dress, and then another – they’re so white they almost stand out in the horrid light, and somehow it doesn’t surprise him that his daughter has left traces like bread crumbs in those fairytales she used to love reading back in the day.

They’ve found some ten pieces of dress before they’re in another very small clearing. They can barely see – the trees are really so thick it’s a miracle neither of them has gotten more than a superficial cut along the way.

Then they hear a noise from their left – why don’t they have a flashlight? – and they move carefully over there.

“Fuck me, that’s a cave,” Davos whispers.

He’s right – there’s one, a bit farther.

Stannis is this tempted to call out, but they’ve kept silent until now and he’s not sure he wants to attract any attention, so he moves in front of Davos and tries to walk faster until he’s at the entrance of the cave. It’s so dark inside he can’t see a bloody thing, though.

“Shireen?” he calls out, almost sure he won’t get an answer, but then there’s another noise and someone is running towards the exit and –

“ _Dad_?”

He’s not ready for it when his daughter launches himself at him and knocks him over – Davos catches the both of them, thankfully, and by the time Stannis is more or less upwards she has her arms so tight around his neck it almost feels suffocating, but he’s sure he’s never felt more relieved in his entire bloody life.

“Yes,” he says, and that’s probably not what he should have said, but he never was one for talking and he’s so floored he can’t even think of anything. He lifts her up clutching back at her – she has no shoes anymore and the lower part of the dress is torn to shreds, but at least she isn’t openly bleeding. That’s probably why she didn’t try to move from her cave. Smart thinking.

“I hoped you’d figure the lights out,” she sobs. “I knew you would.”

He’s half-sure his throat is so choked he can barely mutter _I couldn’t not_ , and he feels like he should say something more meaningful and deep and whatever else it is that usually happens in those corny movies he pretends to suffer through for her sake but which he secretly doesn’t hate that much, at the end of it, but then –

“Shireen,” Davos says, moving so that he’s at her back and they’re effectively covering all angles, “not that I’m not happy to see you, but we need to run. Before that, though – is Myrcella here?”

Shireen lets out a sob and she shakes her head. “We were together until a few hours ago, but then one of those zombies showed up and we had to run and I lost her.” She breaks down in tears again and Stannis can only run his hand along her back so much. “I don’t know where she is.”

“Well, there’s another – five people looking for her. We should try to leave now – if we run into her, good. If not – well, we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

“Yes – yes, you’re right,” Stannis agrees. “Come on. Keep your eyes open for ravens.”

“ _Ravens_?”

“It’s – they should fly near the way out,” Davos says, sounding like he can barely believe he’s saying it. Stannis can feel his pain. “Long story. We’ll explain you when we’re out. If we get out.”

“We are getting out,” Stannis cuts him off, “don’t even go there.”

“Fine, fine, you’re the boss. Come on, let’s just – keep our eyes open. I’m not even trying to go back where we came from.”

No, Stannis thinks. _No, that would be a very, very bad idea_. He couldn’t begin to remember the way out and if they get out of that portal when there are supposed to be zombies on the other side…

He sticks to Davos’s side, painfully aware that if anything happens he can’t defend the both of them – and he _hates_ feeling like this. But he’s not going to let Shireen walk with bare feet on this ground.

They take the opposite way out and then the bushes become slightly less thick, and some moonlight passes through the trees, and –

A moment later, they hear a raven croaking in the distance, but it wasn’t too far.

He looks at Davos, who gives him a terse nod.

“Right. That way.”

“This is weird, though,” Shireen says. “I mean, before – we could hear them walking by. They wouldn’t notice us. But we could. Now there’s _nothing_.”

“She’s right,” Stannis says, suddenly noticing that other than the ravens croaking he can’t hear one single sound.

Davos looks like he wants to burst out crying. “Stannis, didn’t you hear that poor kid?”

“Jon?”

“He said that the moment he opened the portal, each one of those things would aim for him. Or would follow the head zombie. _Whatever_. Of course we can’t hear anything. Because they’re all going where we came from.”

Davos turns right, where the ravens’ croaking is coming from.

Stannis holds on to Shireen tighter and runs after him, and doesn’t ask Davos if he’s feeling as horrid about this entire matter as he is. He knows he wouldn’t change _this_ for the world, but the idea that in order to save their kids they have to send those other two to slaughter is still sickening.

He really hopes they make it through.

He really hopes they _all_ do.

He also doesn’t even think of asking Shireen how she could make contact with him or why those fireflies would show them the way. It’s not the point right now.

\--

“Sansa, damn it, _wait_.”

Sansa barely hears what Dacey is telling her – she heard another scream, and she’s sure it’s Jeyne, and it’s so close – she can’t afford to slow down, all right?

She doesn’t waste any breath telling them to can it and she runs faster. Or she tries to – the ground is getting slippery and the hail isn’t helping, good thing that at least there aren’t that many trees in this part of this forest, wherever it is –

And then she sees Jeyne.

She’s on the ground, trying to get away from this man with blue skin and skeletal fingers and bloodied teeth who’s looming over her, and Jeyne is grasping at a few bushes behind her to get herself forward, she has a hurt ankle or something so she can’t move, but the only result is that she’s getting her hands sliced up.

If Sansa runs, she’ll never get there in time.

Sansa throws herself on the ground as Jeyne screams again – the thing’s hand moves downwards as she does, closer to grab Jeyne for good, and Sansa rolls over up until she knocks into Jeyne and pulls the both of them out of the zombie’s reach for the moment, at least.

She – she hadn’t quite believed it fully until she _saw_ it, but –

It’s probably ridiculous that the only thing she can think of is, _and Arya said she got away from one of these things by_ kicking _it_?

“Sansa?” Jeyne says quietly, her voice barely audible.

Sansa would like to tell her a lot of things. _I’m sorry_ , first and foremost. But the darned zombie has its unnatural blue eyes set on the both of them and it’s turning towards them again, its hands reaching out –

Sansa grabs at Jeyne’s shoulders and tries to turn them both over again on the slippery cold ground when two shots ring out over the sound of the thing’s hissing, and a moment later it falls down on the ground. Pod is standing behind it with a fuming gun in his hand and looking at it as if he can’t believe he actually went there.

“I – it was the first time I hit a moving target,” he says weakly.

“Fuck’s sake,” Ygritte says, coming up behind him, “ _what is that_?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t like it one bit. Definitely not the boss of them,” Dacey says, looking around. “That was a badass save, though. Poole, glad to see you all in one piece. Mostly.”

_Mostly_?

Sansa takes a good look at Jeyne as she moves away slightly, and –

Oh.

Her nose is covered in frostbite.

For a moment she wants to cry.

“I’m sorry,” she says a moment later. “I shouldn’t have left you to go back alone. I shouldn’t even have insisted to bring you to that party. I’m – I was a failure of a best friend, wasn’t I?”

Jeyne looks like she’s about to cry, but all the tears are freezing on her face. “I don’t know, you’re _here_ , aren’t you?”

“Girls,” Ygritte cuts them, “as moving as this is, we really need to get the hell out of here. Possibly the way we came from.”

“What?” Pod doesn’t seem too convinced. “Ygritte, that’s where _most zombies are going to show up_. I don’t think it’s the safest option.”

“Yes, and who is going to stop _most of those zombies_? I –“ She starts, and then her eyes go wide, and – “Sansa, _move now_!”

Sansa does, Jeyne going back under her, and she turns slightly and _oh no there’s another zombie looming over them and it just came out of the trees and how was it so silent_ , but then Ygritte kicks it in the knee and drags them to the side (Sansa has to wonder how strong she is even if it wasn’t much of a distance).

“Right, it’s clear!”

A moment later the second zombie falls down to the side and both Pod and Dacey are holding up two smoking revolvers.

“Huh,” Dacey says, her hands slightly shaking, “those two weeks at a target range last summer really weren’t wasted.” Her voice isn’t very steady, though. Sansa can entirely understand her. She doesn’t know if she can talk.

And then a raven flies above their heads and towards the opposite part of the clearing. Pod looks at it, then moves towards the two of them and holds a hand out. “Right. Come on, we need to follow it. At least _us_ , if Ygritte wants to go back then –”

“I am. It’s four of you, you can handle it. I just – I’d feel better if I went back.”

“Fine. Take this.” He hands her the other spare gun he had and then she runs off the way they came from.

“Shit, I hope I don’t regret it,” Pod says, and oh – right. Sansa takes the hand he’s holding out to her and takes Jeyne’s in turn, and a moment later the both of them are standing on their feet. More or less – Jeyne wobbles a bit, but she does manage to not fall back down.

“Right. Girls, we should leave. Like. _Now_. The sooner we’re out of this creepy-ass place the better.”

Dacey has a point or ten, Sansa thinks, shuddering. She tries not to think about Arya and Robb being right where the other zombies are going – for a moment she thinks they should just try to go back, but Jeyne is barely even standing and she needs a doctor, she has cuts everywhere and Sansa can see bruises all over her bare legs (her dress is torn, of course).

“Right. Let’s go. Pod, you don’t happen to have another gun?”

“No. We left the others with – with your sister. Just make sure she keeps going, okay? I – we’ll get out. I’m sure we’ll find a way.”

He sounds as if he’s saying it to make all of _them_ feel better himself included, but Sansa decides that there’s no point in pointing that out – he’s already doing an admirable job of keeping it together, she thinks, considering how on board he looked at the beginning of this hell.

She puts Jeyne’s arm around her shoulders and she walks faster. She can see a raven flying around a tree in the not so far distance, Jeyne isn’t lagging too much and –

And maybe, maybe they’ll be out of this absolutely horrid place sooner than she expected.

\--

The only good news about finding out that the noise they heard was a tree falling down is that Brienne didn’t have to run too far to at least know the source.

The bad news is that it’s not helping her find out why. Or helping at all.

She touches one of the branches and it cuts through the tip of her fingers the moment they brush against it.

_What is this bloody place even_? She brushes the blood off on her jacket, at this point dry cleaning isn’t the first item on her list of current worries, and tries to go around the tree. It leads her to a fairly open path, all things considered. It’s neat. It kind of looks like the path in the woods going to the military base, for that matter.

It’s not exactly a good omen, but it’s either that or what looks like forest so thick she could barely even see, and so she heads towards that path.

She also hasn’t failed to notice that _everything is completely silent_.

_Who even puts two kids through years of seeing this place_?

Brienne doesn’t even want to come up with a few plausible replies to that question.

She moves forward, all too aware that she’s getting really far from the portal. Well, she’ll try to go back if she doesn’t find anything else –

She hears a scream.

Which could have _very much_ come from a young girl.

Brienne turns left and runs – the path is still fairly free, good thing that, and then she sees it.

Myrcella’s raincoat is stuck on the branch of a tree, half-ripped in two. Or at least, from what Brienne knows, she was wearing one like that when she disappeared.

“Myrcella?” she calls out, not really hoping to get an answer –

“Who’s there?”

That came from – above her?

Brienne moves further down the path and – there she is. Sitting on one of the tree’s branches. Her jeans are ripped, her boots aren’t and it’s probably the one reason her feet aren’t as torn as her hands and the moment she recognizes Brienne she breaks down in tears. The poor girl’s hair looks like a bird’s nest and most of her clothes are good for a trashcan, but for a moment Brienne thinks she’s never felt more relieved in her entire life.

“Miss Tarth?” she breathes out.

“Indeed. Jump off, I’ll catch you.”

Myrcella does without letting Brienne tell her twice, who then grabs her at the waist before gently placing her feet on the ground. She’s shivering and freezing and she definitely needs a doctor for superficial wounds, but it could be a lot worse.

“Have you seen Shireen?” she sobs. “We had to split before, one of those zombies was coming after us and we kind of lost each other, but –”

“Her father and the inspector are looking for her,” Brienne assures her. “I think she’s alive. What I’d like to know – is your, uh, you haven’t seen or heard your uncle, right?”

“What? Uncle Jaime? No, I – I haven’t. Should I?”

“I’d have felt better if you said you did,” Brienne sighs. She doesn’t want to search for the way out inside the base if Myrcella is with her, but –

She did tell Jaime she’d come back for him. And she doesn’t like not having a clue of the mess he ended up in –

She doesn’t even finish formulating that thought because then she hears another scream.

That was a _man_.

And it was –

“It sounds like him,” Myrcella says weakly, sounding like she’s about to break down in tears again.

“Well, we’re going to check it out. Stay behind me.”

“But – where was he supposed to be?”

Brienne breathes in a handful of cold air before trying to find a way to break it to her. “We broke into the base together because we thought – they had something to do with your disappearance. They did. But – they found us out and he stayed in order to let me escape.”

_And he told me to inform you that he’s really your father, but I think I’ll wait a bit before telling you_.

“Then – then _how can he be here_?”

“They did have something to do with you ending up here. There’s a way in inside the base,” Brienne says as she speeds up. There’s more noise. And more screaming. And then the path seems to interrupt itself, and she reaches the edge to look downwards and and and –

There’s some kind of depression in front of her – it’s a bit like a pit in the middle of the woods. It’s not that rough a descent though, she could run down without that many problems. That’s not the problem. The problem is that Jaime is inside it, he has one of those blue, hellish zombies in front of him and _there’s a bleeding stump in the place of his right hand_.

And he doesn’t look like he’s winning this battle anytime soon.

Not when _the zombie is crushing something bloody and gory in between its fingers_.

“Myrcella?” Brienne says, quickly. “Stay here. Don’t move. If you see a zombie, run the other way and look for some ravens, they fly near ways out. _Got it_?”

“Yes,” she replies weakly.

“Good. I’m getting him out,” Brienne says, and then she jumps into the pit without even thinking twice.

Then she remembers she gave her gun to Robb Stark before coming here figuring that _kids_ would need them more than she did.

Damn it.

She runs behind the zombie, grabs its shoulders and tries to throw it to the side – she manages, sort of partially, because it does get off Jaime but it doesn’t land far off. It was _heavy_.

“ _Brienne_?” Jaime asks, sounding completely incredulous and as if he’s desperately trying not to faint from the pain he’s feeling, which is something she can imagine.

“Get behind me,” she says, moving so that she’s in between him and the zombie.

“You don’t even have a weapon!” he protests.

“Because _you_ do?” She grabs him by the shoulders and hauls him out of the way as the zombie tries to come at them again – does that thing even feel pain, Brienne asks herself.

“Got me there,” he rasps. “Shit, this was a really bad idea.”

She grabs a handful of dust and hauls it at the zombie’s eyes, figuring that might stall it for a moment, but she doubts the can run away and leave it here. It’ll be back on them soon enough.

If only –

Her hand goes to her hip, looking for a gun that isn’t there, but then she feels a box of matches she had bought because one of her kitchen’s stove burners isn’t working anymore unless you light it up yourself.

_Desperate times call for desperate measures_ , she thinks.

“Jaime? _Stay the hell behind me_ ,” she says as she grabs the box and lights up one of the matches.

“What are you –”

She doesn’t even hear that out – she takes a step closer while the zombie’s still disoriented, tries to not vomit the moment she smells rotten body as she moves close enough that she can touch the jokes of clothes it’s wearing.

Then she holds the flame next to them for a few moments and jumps backwards.

Just in time to see the thing go up in flames. She grabs at Jaime’s arm and drags him upwards, towards the edge where Myrcella is looking down at them with a face that is relieved, shocked and scared as hell at the same time.

“Shit,” Jaime says, noticing her, “given that I ended up here ‘cause Bolton told me I should try to find her if I was that dedicated to it and _you_ did it for me, this isn’t looking very dignified.”

“How in the name of – how can you _talk_ that much when that thing _cut off your bloody hand_?” Brienne says as she climbs up and helps him over the edge. Myrcella helps her drag him backward and Brienne takes off her jacket and then her shirt, even if she’s _really_ freezing, but –

She can’t possibly leave him like this if she wants him to live.

She tears off a piece of her shirt and wraps it up around the stump – at least it’s a clean cut. More or less. She doesn’t want to know how that happened.

“Hey,” Jaime tells Myrcella a moment later, “sorry that this rescue business ended up without – well, _I_ am not rescuing you.”

“No, it’s –” She starts, tears coming to her eyes.

“Hell, _she_ is rescuing us, I guess. You really have a knight in shining armor syndrome, Tarth, don’t you?”

“No one who lost as much blood as you did should have the right to talk this much,” she repeats, closing off the tourniquet for as much as she can. “Come on. On your feet. We need to find a way out, possibly not in the bloody base.”

“I agree,” Jaime blurts. “Myrcella, if we ever get out of here I’ve got something to tell you, all right?”

“All – all right. Do you need help?” She looks like she’s really about to cry now – a few tears do escape her eyelids but freeze on her cheeks.

“Nah, Brienne here’s enough, thank you. By the way, I guess you’re the kind who keeps her word, huh?”

“Why did you even think I’m in this line of work?”

He stares at her for a long moment before looking forward and worrying about putting his feet one in front of the other – Brienne lets him worry about that and at the same time she keeps an eye out for more threats.

That is, until she sees a raven flying above her head.

Unless she’s hearing it wrong, it’s croaking _snow_.

“Right, let’s follow it,” she says.

“Wait, why?” Jaime doesn’t sound that convinced.

“Because – because those birds are supposed to tell us the way out. More or less.”

“And who told you that?”

“One of the two kids they were experimenting on. Those files – they were about _them_.”

“Shit, and me thinking that I was dreaming again. But my imagination’s not that fucking terrible, I couldn’t ever come up with this kind of shit.”

“ _Again_?”

“I had an interesting one while I was knocked out at the base,” he whispers, his eyes staring at Myrcella’s back – she’s walking in front of them now.

“Really? And what was it about?” Brienne knows she shouldn’t make menial conversation, but she needs to do something normal and his bickering is – well. It kind of feels comforting. At least he’s not dead and there’s _something_ of the real world in this godforsaken place.

For a moment, he says nothing. Then he shrugs, looks at her, and she couldn’t have even imagined what comes out of his mouth. She had expected a joke. Maybe something about _the mother of his children_. Instead…

Instead he smirks just a tiny bit and says, “I dreamed of you.”

\--

“Shouldn’t you, uh, maybe close that?” Tommen asks a little after everyone who was going to _Westeros_ jumped through the portal and no one has had it in themselves to say a word. “I mean. I guess those things are coming anyway but if you give them less of an opening –”

“No,” Jon says, taking a few steps back. “It doesn’t matter. They know where we are. There are other openings. If I closed this one, it would be just one less way out for the others.”

He sounds so _tired_ , Robb thinks. He can imagine why even too well. Arya looks like she’s forming a very definite opinion about this entire mess but she’s not saying anything. Which, knowing his sister, is… both sweet and worrying, because she never was one to hold back her opinions.

Especially when she’s pissed off.

He can see that brewing.

That’s when Gendry moves up next to him and Theon – Theon hasn’t said a word since everyone else jumped, but Robb isn’t going to press him.

“Uh, Robb?”

“Yes?”

“I just – I wanted to apologize for dragging your sister into this. I mean, she helped me out the other day when Damon and his friends wanted to rough me up while I was putting on a few flyers in the park, and when I accidentally took a picture of one of those Others I didn’t know who else to tell, and –”

Robb shakes his head. He’s entirely too tired to be angry at him, never mind that he barely has a moral ground to stand on.

“Gendry, we _hid the two of them in the basement_ for three days and didn’t tell anyone because we thought no one would believe us or _them_ , do you think I can go lecture you when you also just wanted to find your sister? Come on. Never mind that _my_ sister can obviously take care of herself. Stop fretting.”

“Gendry, _stop_ ,” Arya groans. “I kicked one of those bloody zombies, not you.”

“ _What_ did you do?”

Robb has to give it to Arya – this was the first time since they’ve known each other that Jon’s sounded _genuinely_ shocked by something.

“It was trying to grab me. I kicked it. Twice. Then I ran off.”

“You – but – those things – you can’t just stall them like that. They brush off most of –”

“What can I say,” she shrugs. “I can kick hard.”

Now Jon’s looking at her with what Robb can only describe as pure admiration, and a little bit of awe, and the fact that he has _the exact same facial traits and eyes_ as she does is just making him feel like someone had put a fist around his heart and was squeezing it relentlessly.

Fuck’s sake. Jon’s actually _their bloody cousin_. Or so it looks like. If only he had put two and two together he’d have told his parents long before dragging everyone else into this mess, and now he really hopes this ends well because he just can’t take the prospect of not even getting to know him properly.

(Same as he figures Ygritte wouldn’t take well the prospect of being _dateless_ next prom, but that development is not one he’s going to think very hard about for the moment.)

“Well, just – thanks,” Gendry blurts out before moving back towards where everyone else is grouping. The kids are all whispering to each other and Robb can’t hear them from here, the portal is still open, the ceiling is still looking dangerously unstable and when his attention goes back to Theon again he catches him looking at Jon and Arya tentatively trading jabs at each other (or better: Arya is doing that, Jon’s sort of cautiously answering) with a look of such naked longing that for a moment Robb feels bad for him.

“Hey,” he says, keeping his voice low, “what’s wrong?”

Theon shakes his head. Then he looks at him and when he speaks it’s so low you can barely hear him. Surely no one is doing that on the other side of the room.

“Nothing.”

“Yeah, and I haven’t spent the last three days wondering if I fell into some kind of movie. Fine, come.”

He tells Arya that they’re going to take a breath of fresh air and see if anything comes by and drags Theon outside the main door. The woods are dark and very, very silent.

“Just say it. No one’s hearing us.”

“It’s not a nice thing,” Theon finally says.

“I wasn’t expecting it to be. And I have five siblings and if you haven’t noticed none of us is above petty squabbles. Arya and Sansa have spent the last three years thinking they couldn’t stand each other. Just say it, it’s going to make you feel better.”

“It’s just – it’s always _him_ ,” Theon blurts out. “I never held it against him when we were – back there because I knew we – the same things were happening to us. But he was _valuable_ and I wasn’t, or at least not enough, and –” He looks down at his left hand, then shoves it into one of his pockets. “It sounds so – stupid. I mean, at least I’m not in direct contact with – with _that thing_.”

Robb says nothing – he should probably let him vent.

“And – now it turns out _he_ has family out here. _He_ only has – Others on his conscience, not – not _people_. If we survive this I doubt your parents wouldn’t want _him_. Sometimes I think I hate him a bit, and then I remember that he’s lived ten years with – how did you call him?”

“Who, the head zombie?”

“With _that_ in his head. Should I even – envy him? But then – he’s just – even with that, everyone _liked_ him at once, didn’t they? And sometimes I think I hate him a bit for that.” Fine, that was _really_ spiteful, but Robb can see where he comes from. “I’m a terrible person,” Theon finally says, not looking at him at all.

“You have feelings,” Robb shrugs. “And like, uh, you know it’s not a competition?”

“What?”

“You had it bad, he had it bad, it’s not like you need to do comparisons. And you _sent him off on his own_ because you thought he had better chances without you – don’t look at me like that, Jon said it at some point. You’re not half as _terrible_ as you think you are.”

“No, that was really mean.”

“Well, _I_ still like you, I’m sure Jon doesn’t hate you and if we all survive this I’m fairly sure no one is sending you back where you came from.”

For a moment Theon sends him a look that makes Robb feel entirely unworthy – no one should look that thankful for _common sense_ – but then he hears a noise.

A noise like cars.

_Oh no_ , he thinks as he sees lights coming over towards them.

That’s not zombies.

That’s the darned military and somehow they must have found them out.

“Fuck, let’s warn the others,” he says, grabbing Theon’s arm and dragging him back inside.

Shit, shit, _shit._

\--

“So, you’re saying that Luke is boring because he’s – a paladin?”

It’s probably absurd that Wylla is trying to explain to Jon why exactly Luke Skywalker is boring – according to her at least. Then again, Wylla’s fascination with the dark side is legendary. Bran doesn’t know how she reconciles it with having sort of crushed on Robb a few years ago, the way you can when you’re eight and you think your friend’s brother is cute, but still.

Poor Jon looks hella confused, though.

“There’s nothing _wrong_ with being boring,” Wylla says. “I mean, it’s not that Luke’s not cool, because he is, but just – characters who are always _nice_ and always defeat evil eventually and are just... that nice? They’re like paladins. They can only fight and heal and heal and fight and be nice. At some point it’s just, the same old. Meh.”

“Wylla, given that according to Ygritte _he_ is the resident Luke you’re telling him he’s boring,” Tommen points out, not so helpfully. Wylla goes kind of red in the face at that, but Jon doesn’t seem too offended. He looks amused, actually?

“It’s fine,” he says. “Sometimes – boring is underrated. But he’s not even my, uh, favorite anyway.”

“Good taste,” Wylla declares. “Darth Vader is the _best_.”

“You wish,” Bran chimes in half-heartedly –

And then Robb and Theon crash back into the room. Quite literally. The door falls down on the floor – Robb ran against it when it was closed and the hinges came off for how old they were.

And the both of them look completely terrified.

“What’s wrong?” Arya asks, standing up.

“The military. They’re – they’re here, I think they found us, _how_ –” Robb starts. Jon stands up and looks at the fallen door with the face of someone who’s so tired they could go to sleep for the next century.

“They can keep track of the open portals,” he says. “They probably figured it out when this one opened _here_ and not randomly in the forest as – well, I was on orders to do it like that so they wouldn’t risk people finding out. Or someone running into a portal. Like what happened with your friends. But don’t worry.”

“ _What_? They’re after you! If they take you –”

“They won’t,” Jon replies, still so calm it’s almost eerie. For a moment he looks three times older than fifteen, Bran thinks, and then Robb grabs his shoulder and moves him and Tommen out of the main way. Theon says nothing but shares a look with Jon and moves just behind him, and Arya looks bent on following them but Gendry drags her backwards and next to where they are – good thing that, at least. His sister doesn’t need to get herself killed on top of everything.

Bran suddenly wants to see his parents so bad it _hurts_. Too bad it’s not happening, now is it?

A moment later the entire room is flooded with light – a bunch of cars just stopped in front of the door with their lights on, and so Bran doesn’t see the face of the man who walks inside the room. But he can see _Jon_ ’s face and Theon’s since the light is all on them, and he doesn’t think – he hadn’t thought Jon’s eyes could look that angry, but they are right now.

“Zero. One.”

He has such a _cold_ voice, Bran feels his blood run frozen even with just two words.

“That’s not my name,” Jon replies, and now he actually sounds angry. “And that’s not his either.”

“Maybe not _his_ ,” the man agrees. He has to be the infamous _Sir_ , Bran thinks. And he sounds every bit as terrible as he had imagined him to be, if not worse. “Yours, however? Has never not been One. It’s kind of pathetic of you.”

“I don’t know that,” Jon keeps on. “Since it turns out you lied about a lot more than my name. But never mind. If I were you, I would leave.”

“Oh, _really_. And what could you do to stop me? If I know you, you don’t have half as much power as you’d need to even stop me while keeping that portal open, and _him_?” He laughs. “The one reason he was around, never mind my son, was that if anything happened to you, we’d have an organ donor. I do _not_ think you’re very dangerous right now. _He_ wouldn’t want to hurt anyone in the process, would he?”

Bran can barely see Theon’s face from this angle, but from what he sees he’s not looking too happy about this development either.

Never mind – _organ donor_? Bran wants to throw up. He chances a look at the others – Robb looks ready to murder, same as about everyone else except for Gendry, who just looks plain disturbed.

“I don’t think your _son_ agrees,” Theon says a moment later, and Bran sees the man’s shoulders jerking against the almost blinding light behind him.

“What –” he says. Right. He probably didn’t think Theon was going to actually _say_ anything, did he?

“He’s dead,” Theon goes on. “Not a great loss for either of us. But I didn’t _hurt anyone else in the process_.”

A moment later – a moment later the man just goes rigid. _Completely_. The fact that Bran can only see his silhouette is not helping with how disturbed he’s feeling right now.

“It’s impossible,” the man croaks as his feet rise up from the ground. Not much, but enough to keep him floating. “ _How_ –”

“Maybe,” Theon says, “ _maybe_ I wasn’t as faulty as you thought. But I don’t think I want you on my conscience. Neither does he.”

Bran doesn’t understand what they’re aiming at, but then –

Then people outside the mansion scream, and a tall, large shadow covers those lights before they are smashed by _something_ he cannot see, and –

Suddenly he can see what’s actually going on again because only a few cars outside seem to have lights still on, and –

And there’s a tall zombie with glowing blue eyes and decaying skin and white hair with his hands on _Sir_ ’s shoulders. The skin is also a sickening shade of blue, and Bran can’t help looking at its eyes.

No.

This one is not a zombie. It’s smarter than that. This one is –

“This one is a _lich_ , not a zombie,” Bran breathes out.

“Bran, is _this_ the time for D &D puns?” Tommen replies, sounding scared out of his damned mind.

“But it looks like one,” Bran protests weakly, because what else should he do if not stare in terror at it and at the way its hands are moving closer to the man’s neck –

“Bran, _close your fucking eyes_ ,” Robb screams, and Bran does, and –

In the following years, he’ll wish he had seen it. If only because the sound of the man’s neck crunching in the silence surrounding him will wake him up at night, and maybe it’d have been better to see it happen so he’d have had the entire picture and he could have moved on –

But right now he doesn’t, and he only opens his eyes when he hears something fall on the ground with a sickening rattle.

He does just in time to see a headless body being thrown to the side.

If only that was the end of their problems, Bran thinks helplessly as the thing heads straight towards Jon and Theon, and it’s _looming_ over them at this point. Jon’s face is covered in cold sweat and it’s probably – what did that bastard say about Jon having run out of juice before? Or something similar? His nose starts bleeding so badly that for a moment Bran thinks he’ll faint. He’s still looking up at that thing, though. Bran has no clue how he _can_.

Jon raises a hand up in the air, slowly, as if it weighs a ton, and the lich stops for a moment, but then it keeps on moving. Even if slower.

The amount of blood Bran’s seeing running from Jon’s nose is _really_ sickening.

“We need to help him,” Arya says weakly, but then she tries moving and _she can’t_.

Theon turns and sends her a look – wait, does he look _sorry_ or something?

Bran tries moving.

He can’t.

_Is he keeping them rooted on the spot so they can’t get themselves killed?_

And then Theon looks up at the lich and –

It also stops. It freezes right in front of Jon, and then a _small_ trickle of blood starts running down from Theon’s nose as well – oh. Oh. He’s keeping all of them still.

Jon wipes at his nose with a hand that comes away entirely too bloody, and Bran can see that he’s _crying_ for the effort as he raises his other hand upwards and and and –

The lich jerks a bit, then another bit, but _nothing_ happens, and for a moment Bran is sure that the second Theon inevitably can’t hold the thing still anymore they’re all going to die.

But then –

Then –

“Jon, _catch this_!”

Was that _Ygritte_?

What happens later – it’s in such a short amount of time that for the rest of his life Bran will never have his facts straight about the order.

But suddenly he can move enough to turn his head, and he sees that Ygritte has just climbed out of the portal and thrown Jon some kind of old sword whose edge probably hasn’t been sharpened in years. It might not have been since the owners abandoned the place, but it was lying around on the side of room and Ygritte had it in her hands and then the sword is flying through the air – Jon reaches out and catches it with a shaking hand, but then –

_Then_ –

Then he grabs it with _both_ hands and he stares down at it.

The portal closes on itself and all of a sudden all of them are floating in the air, Ygritte included, while Theon’s nosebleed gets slightly worse as he seems to concentrate completely on the monster in front of him. Jon is still staring down at the sword, and suddenly the blade _glows green_

( _like Luke’s lightsaber?_ , a part of him wonders)

and Jon’s turning it in his hands with the motions of someone who actually knows what they’re doing and he takes a step back before plunging it into the thing’s chest.

For a moment, Bran hears a rattle so sickening he almost wants to throw up at the sound of it, but –

But then the thing starts glowing as blue as the sword as Jon _twists_ , and for a moment he’s completely blinded as the lich bursts out into flames so white he has to close his eyes again as he feels tears prickling at their corners.

And then he crashes down to the ground without much grace – he yelps as he hits the floor and then sees that Ygritte is the only one who’s actually being brought down gently. Huh. Then that was probably Jon keeping her afloat while Theon was doing it with everyone else.

He takes the scene in – Theon has fallen down on his knees and is trying to stop the nosebleed with his wrist, not that it’s helping much, and he’s breathing like he’s just run a marathon. Jon is still standing with the sword in his hands, and for a moment he looks way too small to hold that thing up. He’s not bleeding anymore, though, and he’s – definitely _not_ dead. He looks absolutely surprised by that fact himself, actually.

Ygritte is the first of them who gets out of the stupor that had pretty much grabbed hold of them all – it probably helps that she was the only one who hadn’t crash-landed on the ground.

She stalks towards where Jon’s standing with the darned sword still clenched between his fingers. She puts a hand on his wrist, way more gently than she’d be with anyone else.

“Looks like going back was a good call,” she says, sounding like she’s just catching her breath. “By the way, that? Was _badass_. See? No need to _die_ for dumb causes.”

Jon is breathing in and out so fast Bran thinks he’s going to hyperventilate at some point soon.

“If they waste this chance I’m going to make _so much_ fun of them,” Wylla whispers as she moves next to him and stares ahead at the two of them.

“A chance for what?” Tommen hisses.

“Shh, shut it.”

Bran dares glancing at the others, but – he can’t see Arya anywhere. Everyone else is just staring at the scene in front of them.

It’s probably not ideal that Ygritte and Jon are standing (and Theon is kneeling) in the middle of a lot of blood and other foul-smelling stuff that Bran really doesn’t want to know about.

“Maybe not,” Jon finally breathes out. “And – thank you. I don’t know if I could have –”

“Yeah, if you thought you had to die then you knew nothing, but seems to me that it didn’t happen. Good thing that. And I guess that it’s just like the _Han Solo_ of the situation to get back just in time to save the day, huh?”

“Ygritte, I –” He starts, and then something gets caught in his throat and it seems like he can’t just say it out loud, but then she shakes her head and moves closer, and –

“ _I know_ , damn it,” she blurts out, and –

“ _Good_ , I’m not going to make any fun of them,” Wylla says under her breath as Ygritte drags him forward and –

Bran has to move his eyes away.

That was exactly the gross kind of kiss he wasn’t particularly wanting to see, even if he’s guessing why Wylla is doing the exact opposite.

That is, until Ygritte moves back and stares at Jon with the face of someone who knows they’ll have the last word. “And since I know you weren’t too big on Luke comparisons, I guess that you can still be the Leia of the situation. That was badass enough to qualify.”

At that Jon downright blushes, which is just –

He just _killed a lich and_ –

Bran isn’t sure he’s processing the entire scene.

And then –

“Guys,” Arya says, coming in from the outside, “not to break your moment and the likes, but the outside is _littered_ in corpses, blue or not, we still don’t know where the hell everyone else is and we probably shouldn’t be here when someone goes looking for – for _everyone else_.”

_That_ sounded a tad hysterical, but it does shake everyone out of their haze – Bran helps Tommen and Wylla up, Gendry stands up and heads for the exit where Arya is standing and Robb goes to help Theon up while Ygritte puts Jon’s arm around her. The guy looks about to trip over his own feet – which is only understandable, if you ask Bran.

They all get out and –

Arya was right. The cars have open doors but no drivers, there’s a fair amount of dead men on the ground and some of those zombies, too.

“Uh, Jon?” Tommen asks. “Are we sure that – zombies aren’t going to show up?”

“No,” he says. “I killed the leader. The ones who were here with him are all dead. The rest will be – back in Westeros. Or however you call it.”

“Okay. Good,” Robb says. “And – any chance to know if the others left or not?”

“I’m too tired,” Jon sighs. “I can’t –”

“I can,” Theon cuts him.

“ _What_?”

“I haven’t – they haven’t used me like _that_ for years. I was rested,” he almost snorts. Then he closes his eyes, leaning against Robb’s side.

“They’re out,” he finally says.

“ _All_ of them?” Tommen asks.

“Yes,” Theon says. “I mean – I can sense if someone who doesn’t belong is _over there_. Unless they went too far, but then they’d be dead. No one can go too far in that place. Anyway. There’s just – _them_. The ones who survived, anyway.”

“So – I can close those portals?” Jon says, sounding relieved. “The one in the base would be complicated, but –”

“Yeah,” Theon says. “Do it.”

Jon nods and closes his eyes as well. A moment later, he opens them again as a new trickle of blood runs out of his nose. “All right. All right. It’s done.”

“What were you saying about the portal at the base?”

“I can’t close it if I’m not there. But – it was – I mean, anyone could have as long as they knew what buttons to push, I guess.”

And that’s when they hear the explosion.

It’s far, though not _that much_ , and Bran doesn’t understand what’s going until he sees flames burst out from the forest –

Right where the base is.

He doesn’t think he’s ever seen both Jon and Theon smile at once as they put two and two together and realize that the entire place is probably going to be destroyed soon enough. Someone must have gotten out from that side, he figures.

He also can’t help notice that if he smiles, Theon actually looks – well, not like he’s a bomb ready to blow up at any moment.

All in all, he thinks, it could have been a lot worse.

\--

“You’re _impossible_ ,” Brienne sighs as she tears apart what’s remained of her shirt and changes the bandage around Jaime’s right wrist. “I mean, you’re bleeding out and – and – that just happened and – _and you were thinking about the self-destruct system_?”

“Hey,” he says, and his eyes are way too bright and green for someone who should have passed out a long time ago. “ _Every_ place with this kinda shady shit going on in it it would have some kind of self-destruct system built in. And let me tell you, I’m enjoying the show a _hell_ of a lot.”

“Myrcella, am I wrong or is he talking out of sheer force of will?”

“It’s – a bit of a family trait,” Myrcella says, staring ahead at the flames engulfing the last floor of the building. It still hasn’t caught properly, but Brienne knows it will. And she actually did try to do a check, calling on the radios and such, but it seemed like at least that entire level had been evacuated. Whoever else is in will have time to leave, she decides.

“Yeah, and he needs a doctor,” she says. “Now if only –”

That’s when her pager starts beeping.

Shit, she forgot she had it on her – she grabs it at once.

The message is from Davos – she presses the record to hear it.

_We found Shireen, we’re out, where are you?_

She breathes out in relief as she presses the record button to send an answer. “At the base. We found Myrcella. Lannister needs a doctor _now_.” She sends the reply and the pager beeps again some minute later.

_Should have guessed. We came out in the woods near the mansion. We’re coming._

“Jaime,” she sighs as she pockets the pager – no point in replying. “You know, that thing you told me at the base?”

“Ah. _That_.”

“You should tell her.”

“Do I have to?”

“I think you do.”

“And don’t you have anything to say about it?”

She shrugs. “Judging people isn’t my business and you just about died for her, I think I can pass.”

He smirks and sits back up against the tree. He’s too pale, but she thinks he’s not going to bleed to death. Not for now.

“Right. Myrcella?”

“Yes?”

“I have something to tell you,” he says, and Brienne stands up, leaving them to it. It’s not a conversation she’s supposed to hear, she thinks.

She’s far enough to only hear chattering when her pager beeps again.

That’d be –

“ _Sergeant, uh, Miss, it’s Pod, we’re good, the way out was next to Hollard’s, Jeyne Poole needs a doctor, are you there_?”

Brienne almost slumps against the tree in relief.

She presses the record button again. “We’re out. The Inspector is, too. The other girls are as well. We’re waiting for them near the base. Go straight to the ambulatory, send Sansa home and – tell them to get her parents ready. For _everything_ , I guess.”

She sends the reply, smiles to herself and lets herself lean back against the tree as she watches the base burn.

Maybe she’s going to re-evaluate boring police work from now on, but not just now.

\--

Ned _had_ been worried that his kids had seemed to drop off the radar for a good couple of days.

But in between having kept the bookshop closed for a few days in a row and having to re-do the inventory which he and Cat had been planning for months he just – hadn’t really paid attention.

And then Davos Seaworth showed up on his doorstep with clothes covered in dirt and blood and the face of someone who needs a drink or fifteen, along with his sergeant who looked equally worse for wear.

He said he needed to talk to both him and Cat.

And he did.

The moment he’s done, he downs the half-glass of gin Cat had offered him and Ned thinks that if anyone but Seaworth was telling him this, he wouldn’t have believed them.

But Davos isn’t the kind of person who’d – who’d do this for a practical joke, never mind that the state of his clothes says a lot about how much he’s not joking.

“Davos, just – are you telling me that _my daughters_ went off _fighting zombies_ –”

“Sansa _did_ find Jeyne. Along with my constable and Dacey Mormont. You can call Dr. Rayder if you want him to confirm that she’s in getting ambulatory care right now.”

“ _My daughters_ went off _fighting zombies_ while _my sons_ and their friends went off to look for Shireen and Myrcella and instead they found two kids _the military was experimenting on_ and one of them – one of them is _Lyanna_ ’s kid?”

“Mr. Stark,” Brienne Tarth says, “I know it sounds hard to believe and – I had my own problems getting around to it, but – it’s true. We’ve been there. We’ve gone to look for the girls there and we _found them_. You can ask Stannis if you’d like. Or Lannister, when he’s not in hospital care anymore. And about your sister…” She takes a thick folder out of her bag, runs through it and hands Ned a piece of paper with a picture on top of it. “I imagine we could run tests. But – I don’t think I need to _tell_ you. Do I?”

_No_ , Ned thinks. No she doesn’t, because –

“God, Ned, he looks just like Arya,” Cat breathes out. “And you always said –”

“That Arya looked like Lyanna,” he finishes. “And the date of birth – Christ, Cat, it’s _the day before the one she died_. Or so did the hospital staff say. But – why would they do such a thing, why –”

“We don’t know,” Brienne replies. “But – he’s at the station along with everyone else. We said we’d drive them here but – well, I think they’re all afraid of how long you’re going to ground them.”

“Christ,” Ned repeats. He’s not sure he has any better words. “And – what about the other? I mean, is he the same age or –”

Davos drinks another shot of gin. “No, he’s in his early twenties. He wasn’t there from – the very beginning. We could say that your, uh, nephew, he’s kind of better adjusted, for lack of less horrid terms, but given everything they went through they could be a lot worse. By the way, he’s kind of friends with Robb. I mean. From what it looks like.”

“With _Robb_?”

“Your nephew is friends with just about everyone else, it seems.”

“Somehow,” Cat says, “it does not surprise me that someone related to your sister would be friends with _everyone_ and _Robb_ would befriend the one who’s not a social butterfly.”

She’s got a point. It’s _entirely_ not surprising, not if you know how Robb ticks.

Ned remembers how, back in the day, when he heard that Lyanna’s baby was dead, he had thought, _if only he had survived I’d have brought him up with my own_.

He thinks, _maybe it’s not too late_ , if it’s true.

“Well,” he says, after a long moment, “I guess we should come with you to the station, _meet_ those two and give everyone else the grounding they deserve, shouldn’t we?”

“Sounds like a plan,” Cat agrees, her hand clasping his own.


	8. not all boats which sail away into darkness never find the sun again

_October 1984_

_“You’re – you’re Theon, aren’t you?”_

_He almost shrieks – the girl had been so silent he hadn’t heard her, and while Robb did tell him that someone asked if she could see him and he had said that they could come down, he hadn’t been paying attention to the basement’s stairs._

_(He still can’t believe the Starks decided to let him stay and that Robb didn’t blink at the idea of sharing the basement with him.)_

_He turns slowly – it’s a girl around Sansa’s age, dressed in an oversized sweater and old jeans, with brown hair tied neatly in a braid and – the tip of her nose is covered in black frostbite. For a moment he thinks,_ who would even want to see me _, but then he remembers –_

_“You’re… Jeyne?”_

_“Yes,” she says, and then she moves closer to him, her hands obviously itching to do something, and then she looks up at him._

_“When – when I was down there.”_

_“It’s –”_

_“No._ Listen. _When I was there I had no clue what was happening, I was scared out of my mind and I think I was about to get myself killed or... something. And I thought no one knew I was there and even if they did know, how would they get me? I just – I was sure I’d die down there. And then I don’t know how that happened but I_ heard _you and you told me people were looking for me and – and someone knew I was there and that was the one reason I put some effort into staying alive at that point.”_

_He doesn’t know what to say. He has no idea. He shakes his head and tries to tell her it was nothing, but then she puts her hands on his shoulders, so very gently._

_“Thank you,” she chokes, and then her arms are around his neck very tentatively and for a moment he doesn’t know –_

_He thinks she’s crying in relief._

_He slowly puts his arms around her back. “You’re – you’re welcome,” he blurts, figuring it’s the least he could tell her._

_But then –_

_Why not? He can control what he can do, these days._

_Though most times, he only uses what Robb’s baby brother calls his_ cool superhero moves _to help other people._

_He hasn’t told anyone that he thinks he knows why things started working properly when he was around someone who seemed to give two shits about his well-being._

_He breathes in and grabs her tighter and a moment later they’re both floating up into the air._

_Nothing else in the room is, for once._

_When Jeyne notices, she opens her eyes and her face turns nothing short of delighted, and –_

_“This is amazing,” she whispers._

_He doesn’t think it is, but it’s nice to see that someone does._

_November 1984_

 

“Arya?”

She was sitting on a park bench with her coat bundled around her – it’s cold, or maybe she’s felt it more since she came back from that hellish place – and she certainly hadn’t expected Gendry Waters to walk up to her, not when the park is almost empty and there’s snow everywhere.

The only reason why she’s here in the first place is that her baby brother is insane and wanted to go play in the snow regardless of the horrid temperatures, Jon volunteered to go with him because he _likes_ it (Rickon calls him _Jon Snow_ , figures) and – she knows that Jon _killed a monster_ right in front of her but she just feels better when she can keep an eye on the both of them. Just in case.

Anyway, they’re having fun at the playground with a few other suicidal kids and she had been going over her history homework.

“Gendry,” she greets him. “Uh, you can sit down. If you want, I guess.”

“Thanks.” He clears his throat and does, looking down at his hands for a moment before glancing at her again.

“How are you doing?” she asks just to break the silence.

“Oh. Things are fine. Shireen’s doing real good, you wouldn’t imagine that she’s been three days in _there_ if –”

“Great, but I was asking you how _you_ were. Your sister still comes over to play D &D – guess they haven’t had enough of that yet. I know how she is.”

“Uh. I – I’m fine, thanks. I mean, I still can’t believe what happened last month but other than that – could be worse. And I don’t have assholes hovering around me threatening to destroy my camera every other day, so.”

Right. Damon and his crew have been very silent, since last month.

They probably know that if they step out of line they might suffer for it.

“Good – good to know.”

“Listen, uh, I was wondering –” He goes red in the face, and it’s not because of the cold. “Oh, damn it. It’s two things.”

“Okay. Shoot.”

“The first is that I sent some pictures to a magazine in Dorchester and they liked them, and – they kind of asked for an entire set.”

“Congratulations,” she tells him. Good. He took good pictures, he’d deserve some recognition and extra money.

“Yeah, well, they want – _mysterious_ pictures. I don’t know what kind of article they need it for, but I think it’s for some short stories they publish? Anyway, I talked to them and I had an idea, and – I need to go take them in the forest. And I was thinking – would you want to come with?”

“Uh, well, if you need company sure, but –”

“I was thinking of modeling, but –”

“You want _me_ to be in your pictures?” She can’t believe she heard it. Most people would have asked Sansa. Sansa would have been flattered. Arya’s never been photogenic or anything of the kind, and for a moment she thinks he was joking –

“Yes, and related to that, you think you might want to –” He rummages in his pockets and hands her a couple of tickets for a movie marathon at the local cinema where she never goes because sitting in a dark room for two hours is way too boring for her tastes. It’s – a retrospective for some obviously campy American martial arts movie that Robb would probably love. “I thought you might like this kind of thing? If you want to come – great. If you don’t – it’s fine anyway, really.”

_He’s asking me out_ , she thinks, silently freaking out. _He’s asking me out and I felt a lot less awkward kicking a fucking zombie in the shin_.

She almost want to laugh out loud, but he’d think he was laughing at her and – right. Not a good idea.

She thinks, _do I actually want to go?_

“Yes,” she finally blurts out, when it looks like the poor boy is about to explode out of nervousness.

“To – to what?”

“To both of them,” she says, smiling slightly, and he looks as surprised to hear that she accepted as she had felt when he asked.

Maybe it’s not going to be the disaster Sansa would have assumed her going out on a date would turn out to be some six months ago, she thinks fleetingly. “But I get to veto the pictures if I don’t like them.”

“Deal,” he says.

Right. She has a feeling she might not regret it.

 

_Christmas Eve, 1984_

 

When someone knocks on her door on the morning of the 24th, Brienne goes to answer figuring it has to be Davos. No way it could be anyone else – her father couldn’t make it for work reasons, she’s just shaken off a bad case of the flu three days ago and didn’t feel like making the trip, and so she had resigned herself to just staying home and watching a few movies.

Honestly, she’s had enough excitement for a lifetime.

That’s why she doesn’t even bother getting out of her pjs and old dressing gown when she opens the door –

Just to find Jaime Lannister standing in front of her. _Impeccably dressed_ , on top of everything.

Sure, he’s short a hand and she thinks he’s gained five years of lines on his face since their trip to that _other dimension_ , but that doesn’t change the overall impression. He definitely has nice polished shoes, a green coat that _definitely_ looks good on him and she’s sure he has dress pants on.

“Uh, sorry, I wasn’t expecting –”

“No need to dress up for the occasion,” he says, “especially because _this_ is not it.”

“Sorry?”

“Right. I’ll say this once. So, it happens that my, well, Myrcella knows.”

“About you being her... father?”

“Yeah. Uhm. I thought it would go over worse. For what that conversation was. I’d never _ever_ in my life want to do it again. Her brother doesn’t know because – we decided it wasn’t a good idea. For the moment. I mean, it’s weird enough. He downright couldn’t be in a room with my sister without freaking out back before she divorced Robert, so – well. Not a good idea, for now. Anyway, since we had that conversation, she’s been _very_ insistent about how much of an idiot I apparently am when it comes to – a lot of things.”

“Okay, I can’t disagree with her too much. So?”

“So, do you want to come over for dinner tonight?”

“Do I – _what_?”

“Want to come over for dinner at my place. They both agreed it would be a way less sad affair,” Jaime says. “Not that any of us is big on Christmas, but still. So. Are you coming?”

“Is – is there a specific reason why you’re inviting _me_?”

“Brienne, you’re not _that_ daft. I saw that. But if you really want to know –”

She didn’t expect him to take a step closer and brush his lips along the scar a few branches left on her cheek back in _Westeros_ which is still angry red and won’t fade for a long while.

“– that’s why,” he says, moving back. “And I’m aware that it was a fairly horrible and rude tease, which is why I hope you show up this evening so that I can make up for it. So?”

The part of her who remembers that time Hyle Hunt from her academy training class asked her out because of a bet is telling her to say no.

The part of her who _really_ would like to forget Hyle Hunt, though, is stronger than that.

“Yes,” she blurts out.

“Great. Looking forward to it. You don’t need to dress up, but consider being _minimalist_.”

Then he winks at her and walks down the path back to the main road, and when she realizes what he’s just implied she thinks her face turns the same shade of cherry red as his scarf.

Still, she’s not too surprised to find out that her mouth has stretched out into a small smile and it’s not going away.

 

_January 1985_

 

“Sansa?”

“Dickon,” she replies politely as her new classmate walks up next to her in the hallway – he arrived in the middle of November along with his brother Sam, who’s two grades above Sansa but is in the school’s book club, so they talked there a few times. He’s also been over at their place a few times because he’s made friends with Jon (they were two of the few people who didn’t have anyone to talk to at recess, figures) and while Sansa doesn’t know Sam that well she thinks she has enough proof he’s a very nice person. His brother, though, is – well, not as much. Never mind that he’s fallen in with the crowd she had desperately wanted to join until the damned party in the span of days and he’s barely taken notice of her until now, he’s just – not really the kind of person she’s interested in befriending. “Can I do something for you?”

“Not really,” he says, “but – like, I was just wondering why is someone like you always hanging out with the same losers?”

“ _Someone like me_?”

“I mean, you’re – _nice_ , you’re smart, you could be out every other day and the likes, and instead you always spend time with the same two people? I don’t get it.”

“Jeyne is my best friend, _thank you very much_.” _And I almost died to get her back, but you wouldn’t know that, would you?_ “And Pod is also a very nice person. And Gendry’s my sister’s boyfriend, sort of, and I know that I can go out with them without worrying that they’ll invite me but not _my best friend_ out for coffee. Or at parties.”

“But you could do so much better!”

“Could I?” She smiles – admittedly she’s kind of basking in how confused he seems to be. “I’m doing fine. If that was some very convoluted way to ask me out, I think I’m not looking for anything right now. Thank you,” she adds, smiling at him very courteously again, and heads for the way out.

“Hey!”

She turns to look at him. Well, he looks like the kind of guy who doesn’t like to take no for an answer.

“You know what, your loss and my gain. Never mind that you live with that freak my brother’s friends with, it was a bad idea in the first place.”

Now, Sansa was going to be nice and polite about this.

Except that since that entire deal went down, since she read her cousin’s _file_ and since he about burst out in tears when her parents told him that of course he could have the spare room in the attic –

Well, she’s developed a healthy allergy to that kind of remarks.

She goes back and grabs Dickon’s arm – good thing Pod gave her some self-defense lessons when she asked just after what went down in October.

“You know, your brother is one of the nicest people I met at the book club. And I’m sure that while his social life might be less busy than yours, the quality is better. And don’t you _ever_ talk shit about my family or my friends in my presence again, _got it_? By the way, if you want someone to go out with you, insulting the people she likes is not the way to go.”

She kind of maybe pushes him against the wall strongly enough that he yelps, and then she smiles at him again and leaves without anyone trying to stop her or look at her wrong – most people are pretending they haven’t seen anything.

Sansa heads out to meet Jeyne so they can go home together – Dickon Tarly can stay back and think about his life and choices. She’s plenty fine with hers.

 

_February, 1985_

 

“Shireen?”

“Yes?”

“Do – do you mind if I ask you something?” Stannis wouldn’t even ask permission to _ask his daughter a question_ , usually, he hates it when people do that generally, but it’s been eating at him long enough and he hasn’t found it in himself to bring the topic up. Especially when she insisted to go back to normal in a couple of weeks and he honestly couldn’t bring the topic up, not when she didn’t seem to be in a hurry to do so herself.

Still.

He’s been wondering that for a long time now.

“No,” she answers, “I think I know what it is about, anyway.”

“Just – _how_ did you manage to pull off that trick with the lights?” There. He said it.

“You mean, how could I be in contact with you up here?”

“Yes.”

She shrugs, closing the book she had been reading on the other end of the couch he’s sitting at, and obviously thinking about how to word it.

“It’s – complicated. I don’t even know if I can explain it properly. That place was – strange. I just – I thought I wanted to go home more badly than I had ever wanted anything else in my life, and – Myrcella and I, we spent the first couple of days hiding out in another cave. I’d _think_ that and I’d close my eyes and I’d see _home_ , like, I could picture it in my head down to the last detail, but – at some point I understood I wasn’t just picturing it. I was _seeing_ it. It was when you called out for the first time. I heard it. You would hear a lot of things down there without knowing where It came from. And – I tried to answer, but it wouldn’t work or you wouldn’t hear, and at some point I wished that _some_ light would turn off so you’d understand I was there.” She stops, takes a deep breath and puts her book to the side for good. “It happened. I mean. It worked. That’s when I thought I could try with the Morse code, but the first few times the lamps exploded because – I guess I was in a hurry and overdid it? I don’t know. I barely even remember how it actually went.”

Somehow, it was the kind of answer he had been expecting. It’s not what he would have liked, because knowing his daughter could do _that_ kind of thing but not knowing why is almost as unsettling as knowing that some other mental case could try and do again what they just stopped _here_.

“And was that just you? I mean, it didn’t work with Myrcella?”

“No. She tried but said nothing would happen.”

And if only some people can do what you did, then who says it couldn’t have been you instead of those two poor kids?, he thinks but doesn’t say.

“If you want to know if it’s happened again,” Shireen says a moment later, “it hasn’t.”

“I wouldn’t care if it did,” he replies, “but I’d care if someone else found out it did. I doubt that it was such a top secret project some higher-up couldn’t have known about it. And we both know how those two ended up in the loving care of our military. I wouldn’t want it to be you.”

She gives him a small smile before lying down against his side – he hadn’t been expecting it but he puts an arm around her a moment later.

“Something tells me that you wouldn’t let that happen too easily,” Shireen says, and she sounds sure of that.

Well. She’s right.

 

_March, 1985_

 

“Inspector, you will understand that your version of the facts is a bit hard to believe?”

There are a lot of reasons why Davos despises the military.

One of them is that they can’t just realize when they fucked up enough that they should just go along with it and pretend nothing happened. It’s not like he ever thought he could find a way to get those two poor kids justice – it won’t happen because it’s the _military_ and it would imply going public and ruining their lives just when they’re, well, living them, so he didn’t even assume he could try.

That said, since the story he came up with leaves them fairly in the clear, he just wishes they would understand that they should just let this go.

“ _General_ Frey,” he replies, taking care to stress how much he despises the rank. Never mind that the man in front of him is one of those people who have been in their position at least since bloody World War Two and probably has authorized more ethically unsound shit than Davos can imagine. “I have told you countless times, I will again. The girls had gotten scared because of a few dangerous wild animals and they ended up running for their lives, got lost and – well, there’s worse than crossing into the next county, whose border is admittedly very close to Winterfell, and getting lost. Then they found their way back. The body in the lake was an unfortunate accident and we still couldn’t identify the girl it belonged to, but it was so mauled it’s making it hard. Never mind that no one claimed it. Poor Mr. Hollard was unlucky and we are still looking for the armed robber who most likely shot him. Concerning your people, well, I can hardly be responsible if a short circuit ends up blowing up an entire base? Next time call a better electrician.”

“Inspector,” the man says, his voice rasping. Davos hates the sound. “That base would _not_ have blown up because of a, hm, short circuit.”

“I’ve seen stranger things,” Davos answers, and he keeps on looking the man in the eyes. He’s not relishing it, but he has reasons to think it’s better to at least pretend all the way. _That_ , though, wasn’t a lie.

“I _can_ believe you did,” Frey goes on. “And given that I doubt everything in there could go up in flames given the, hm, _valuable_ content of a few things housed in that base, I also can believe that you aren’t telling the truth here.”

Davos figures it’s time to lay the cards on the table. He’s been called in every other month by some military big name, always bigger, since last year, and he’s honestly done with it.

“General, I think you can stick with my story and we can both pretend what benefits the both of us or you can do something very, _very_ stupid.”

“How would that benefit _the both_ of us?”

“I don’t know. Like this, you get to go on and think about whatever other ethically questionable plan you’re cooking up and I go on and do my job and look after my fellow townsmen and so on. Now, I know what the _valuable content_ is that you want, and I can assure you that you’d have to walk over a few dead bodies before getting to it. Never mind that the _valuable content_ themselves quite like the state of things and would most likely turn _you_ into a few dead bodies before you could lift a finger. Now, do you want to try that and possibly have the entire story become public? Because you’d have to explain how Lyanna Stark’s hospital file says that she died of an allergic reaction to a drug that her brother swears to hell and back she _wasn’t_ allergic to. Then you’d have to explain how the file her brother read fifteen years ago said that she died of C-section-related complications just after the birth while the one he read now says that she died _three days later_. Then you’d have to explain why the military would approach some asshole whose two eldest sons just died, who’d just lost his job and whose neighbors assured me was fairly handsy with the rest of his family back in the day, and why a week later his four-year old kid disappears into thin air. You’d have to explain how the guy moved into a nicer and bigger home a couple of months later and how, whenever his wife showed up at one of the _sixty_ police stations she went to, saying that said asshole _sold their child to the military_ , no one ever listened to her and no one ever even tried to open a case file. At that point you’d just try and write this off as nonsense, but the moment you do then you’ve gone _public_ , and if you do then _they_ also will go public before you can do anything else, and believe me, you don’t want it. Because then it would be common knowledge that whether you managed to go into another dimension or not, you still used two _children_ as test subjects and that you’ve done that killing one’s mother and _buying_ the other one. Guess what, I thought selling and buying people for money was outlawed in this fair country, or am I wrong? So, you can stick with my story and let them live their lives or you can tell the world the truth, but no one’s letting you do that under the radar. And if you’re thinking that _I_ could conveniently disappear, don’t bother. My vice knew where I was going, her almost-boyfriend apparently still has a few good connections in between your colleagues who would try to find out what happened to me and your _valuable content_ – well, they don’t like to show off, but they probably would use their skills to help the cause. Now, are you going to fucking let me go on with my life or am I going to get a call from your boss a month from now? Because I have a job to do. And that’s not talking to _you_.”

The man sends him a look that’s – well. He’s not happy about this conversation, he knows Davos is right and he’s quite literally seething, but Davos couldn’t care less.

“ _Fine_ ,” he says eventually. “You’re free to go, Inspector.”

“ _Thank you_. For that, not for anything else. And if I were you, I’d try to defend my country with what I have, not with _monsters I can’t control_. Also, I’d stop referring to human beings as, you know, _content_. Might make you a slightly less horrible person.”

He doesn’t even wait for the answer – he stands up, throws the chair to the side and leaves the room, then the building.

No one stops him.

Good thing that, at least. His car is still where he parked it just outside the building – it’s the service car, he never bothered buying one when in _Winterfell_ it’s a waste of gas if you don’t go outside often. Given that in the last months they wore it out, he should probably ask for funds for a new one.

Well, not just now.

He climbs in, turns the engine on and drives back towards the freeway. He turns on the radio, trying to find out any frequency that’s not the news, and gives up on it after a minute. It’s just news and more news, so he just leaves it on a random one –

And then just as he gets out on the freeway the news suddenly stop, and a moment later it’s not some inane chatter filling his ears but Paul McCartney singing about taking a sad song and making it better.

Incidentally, it was the first song on the mixtape Davos handed over to Theon last Christmas.

(At some point while talking to the two of them he had realized they didn’t know zilch when it came to pop culture that their friends hadn’t shown them and he made each of them a tape with stuff he thought they might like from, well, not the past five years.)

He smiles to himself and drives ahead.

 

_April, 1985_

 

“Fine. Fine, there’s a _tarrasque_ in the way.”

“Robb, _seriously_?”

Robb shrugs and turns towards Wylla, who’s staring at him as if he’s completely lost his mind.

“Seriously, _what_?”

“You’re the DM and just made yourself fight the most complicated thing you could when you’re _deciding how the game goes_?”

“Because it’s _fair_? And it was – well, it wouldn’t make sense that it wasn’t there?”

“How does your party even survive when it’s just the four of you?”

“Hey, that’s why he’s a good DM,” Dacey says. “Never mind that we have, like, a party of _eight_ now. And we’re all past level sixteen. If he has something in mind we might not end up, well, all dead.”

“Hey, I have a strategy,” Robb replies, before launching into it – it’s admittedly complicated and would require some extra luck with rolling the dice but he might just pull it off. Never mind that Dacey’s right – doing games with eight people instead of four does give you a lot of leeway for this kind of planning. One day he’ll convince Jon and Theon to join in even if for now they’ll just make a face and say that no, they’ll watch, thanks, but _not fucking really_. He asked once if it was because it reminded them of – well, _Westeros_ , but they both stared back at him and said that no, it was only that it looked really fucking complicated.

It’s a point, but one day.

“Right,” Shireen tells him when he’s done, “ _if_ you get a roll higher than twenty the first time, or you’re going to have to improvise.”

“Who says I can’t improvise?” He feels fairly good about his chances, for that matter. And anyway sometimes you have to risk it.

He grabs the dice and throws them – he needs a twenty, damn it. He really hopes he gets a twenty, if only because then if they improvise it’s going to be a lot harder, and –

One of the dice is showing a fourteen and the other hasn’t fallen flat, so it’s kind of hovering in between a ten and a four.

A moment later, it falls flat and the face upwards shows a ten.

Ygritte whistles along with Bran and most of the rest of the table. “That,” she said, “was rotten luck.”

“Or maybe I’m just good,” Robb smirks back at her.

“Yeah, sure, can you stop bragging and see if we can make this thing run?” Bran asks, rolling his eyes and holding his hand out for the dice. Robb hands them over and as he does his eyes meet Theon’s on the other side of the room – he’s sitting on his bed staring at them while Jon is on Robb’s reading some book which looks suspiciously like one of those comics of Arya’s that she shouldn’t be reading (according to their parents) but that she still somehow acquired anyway.

One of Theon’s eyebrows rises up ever so slightly as his lips curl up in a small, satisfied smile and then he goes back to pretending he’s caring about Bran’s turn.

Okay, so maybe Robb wasn’t _just that good_ in this instance but in his defense he has never asked for help with rolls.

He looks at the rest of the table getting very worked up about Bran’s roll – Tommen is praying he doesn’t have to waste any of his life points on this, Myrcella is looking at the spells she has at her disposal, Ygritte is saying that she really hopes the thing is dead or neutralized before she has to roll because she has no fancy spells goddamn it, Dacey looks fairly laid-back – well, she has a level nineteen character by now, Shireen is looking at the game as if taking notes for when she’s playing DM next round and –

Well, he thinks, last October was something out of nightmares, but the way things turned out? He’s not sure he’d change it. Not at all.

 

_May, 1985_

 

“He’s coming down in a minute,” Robb tells Ygritte as he lets her in. “I mean, he was going to be down already but Sansa was – uh, let’s just say the outfit didn’t have her seal of approval.”

“The _outfit_ ,” Ygritte repeats. She isn’t even wearing anything special – she’s in her usual black jeans and she barely even bothered with make-up. The only concessions she made to the occasion were flats instead of sneakers and a white fake-silk shirt instead of her usual band tees, but it’s not as if she’s going to prom for _show_.

“We told her,” Robb says apologetically, “she wouldn’t hear otherwise. If you want to sit down –”

She doesn’t have to – there’s some noise at the top of the stairs and then Jon’s coming down and – well, damn it. Given that he wanted to grow his hair out (for entirely understandable reasons, Ygritte thinks) he hadn’t cut it since last October, but someone must have given it a trim because it’s all neat now, and maybe you can see it slightly curling at the points even if it’s still not long enough to know for sure. He also doesn’t have a piece of clothing on it that isn’t black – she’s not going to make jokes about Luke in _Return of the Jedi_ just because she knows he’s not big on that comparison, but it’s really similar.

And damn, but he looks _good_ in it.

“Look at that,” she says, coming closer to the stairs, “if those stuck-up idiots from your grade don’t end up envying the shit out of me I’d be surprised.”

He goes slightly red in the face about that – he would, given that he is indeed stuck with a bunch of idiots. Then again, Ned and Cat had to spin a really long and complicated lie to the principal in order to enroll him in the grade below the one he should be in given his age, but Jon had sort of insisted to do it and well, he’s stuck to the _he ended up in the system and his relatives only found out fifteen years later_ cover-up admirably. Too bad his classmates have just decided he’s weird and left it there, but they’re idiots – even if they don’t come around, who cares.

“We’ll see, I guess,” he blurts out, but he looks fairly relieved at her reaction.

“You know nothing. They’re going to eat their hands.”

“Er,” Robb says, clearing his throat, “I’m just going to say it and leave you to it, but – my parents _might_ have told me that if you don’t want to come back home tonight and stay over at hers, they wouldn’t have a problem with it. And with that, I’m – yeah. _Have fun_.”

He makes a beeline from the basement at that point, and –

_Well_.

That’s interesting.

“What do you say,” she asks, holding out her arm, “you think you might want to go back to my place later?”

He takes it cautiously, and then he tentatively smiles back at her. “I think I do,” he says, and he also sounds very sure about that.

Later, she’ll find out that he can dance a lot better than anyone would have given him credit for and it will be obvious that she likes it more than he does. At the same time, most of her classmates who spent a semester calling her a loser behind her back because _is she seriously dating a weird-ass kid who’s also younger_ will be watching the scene looking at a loss for words. Most of _Jon_ ’s female classmates will be watching the scene with the faces of people who can’t believe it and most of his male classmates will look green with envy.

Even later, her feet will hurt because those shoes were new and she’s not adjusted to them, and no one will see them as he grabs her hand, they rise up a few inches above the ground and they hover towards her house.

She’ll also think it was entirely worth it. From the way he’ll look at her, she’ll know he’s on the same page.

 

_June 1985_

 

It’s nine in the evening and Alysane Mormont is about to finish typing up the last report of the day before heading back home – she put in a lot of overtime today but at least it’s paid and if you have two kids to feed and your husband’s disappeared into thin air six months after the second was born, well, you’ll take overtime.

At least no one has been bothering them since a few months ago when it came to those poor kids and Shireen and Myrcella going missing – she doesn’t know what strings the boss managed to pull, but she’s back to filing reports about mostly menial incidents and she’s not complaining about it.

Today she’s the last one in – usually there’s someone in for the night shift but Constable Saan said he would come in at ten thirty and she really has to go get the kids before it’s too late and her mother forgets they should have a bedtime, again. Then again, no one ever needs the police at this time and in case they do everyone knows where to find the others if they’re off shift.

She puts the report in its file and places it on the inspector’s desk so he can sign it tomorrow along with the other five she wrote up before, and then goes to grab her jacket.

And then the door opens.

“Sorry,” she says without turning, “today we’re short on staff –”

“I think I can wait.”

What.

That’s not anyone she knows and she thinks she knows everyone in this town.

She puts away the jacket and turns towards whoever came in – it’s a young woman in her mid-twenties, with short dark hair, dark eyes, pale skin and no make-up. She’s wearing jeans and a light black jacket, and she has a backpack on her shoulders that looks fairly heavy.

Alysane doesn’t know what a tourist would do here – there’s nothing to see – or why they’d come into a police station for information.

“Well,” Alysane says, “if it’s something of import I can’t help you, but if it’s not…”

“It’s of import,” the newcomer replies, “but maybe you also can help me.”

“How so?”

“See,” the woman says, “I read newspapers. And I’ve heard all about those missing girls in November.”

“Shireen and Myrcella? Well, they crossed over into the next county, it was an unfortunate –”

“Let me finish. I heard about those missing girls, and then I heard about the local military base blowing up and no one coming to fix the place up. There was> something nagging at me about it, and so I looked into it – admittedly, not as much as I’d have liked, but finally I found out, and… see. When I was six, my two elder brothers died in a car crash. Their fault, they were both drunk and one of them was driving.”

“Sorry about that, but what –”

“I’ll get there, no worries. My father didn’t take it very well. My mother didn’t either. Then, the next year, all of a sudden my little brother _disappears into thin air_.”

“What?”

“One day he was there, another I come home and he’s not. My father says he just disappeared, and then tells me that it’s vital that if someone asks I tell them he died. My mother absolutely loses it and starts talking about evil people kidnapping him first, then about my father selling him to some kind of secret organization and the likes and – she hadn’t really been well after my brothers died, and I thought she wasn’t handling it, but then _something_ was wrong. Why would I have to lie if he disappeared, and why wasn’t anyone looking for him?” She stops, takes a deep breath and shakes her head. “Well, I was seven and I didn’t really get it. But then I looked things up. I remember what my mother told countless policemen when trying to press charges. She always said that the base they’d have brought my brother to, it was the one near your charming little town. The one that just blew up.”

Alysane thinks she knows where this is going.

Now that Alysane’s looking at her, the woman in front of her does look a bit like Theon, _doesn’t she_?

“Now, I think I want to talk to your inspector. I don’t know if the story you’re telling people is true or not, but what I know is that my mother definitely lost it after one person too many refused to believe her, my father fucked off somewhere I don’t even know when he realized she had to go into professional care and I don’t know how long she has left to live. But if there’s half a chance she was right –”

“Is your mother’s name Alannys?”

“… Why do you know that?”

“Because – let’s say that I can help you. And you might not have come here for nothing. Wait, let me call the inspector,” she says, going back to her phone. “You probably are better off talking to him directly. What should I tell him? I mean, when he asks who it is that wants to see him?”

The woman smiles as she leans back against one of the desks. She definitely looks tired, but now there’s a certain light in her eyes that makes Alysane wonder, _how long has she been looking for answers_?

“You can tell him my name’s Asha Greyjoy and I’m looking for my brother.”

 

End.


End file.
